Fiction based on the historical record can sometimes have the disconcerting effect of changing that record. It can also emerge that the historical record has been fictionalised already by the participants themselves. Novelist, essayist and playwright, Michael Frayn, discusses the ways in which the ground under his influential play Copenhagen has shifted slightly since it was written.
Click here to watch Michael Frayn discussing the play after his appearance at One Culture. You can also read all about it on our blog.
Michael Frayn was born in London and began his career as a journalist on The Guardian and The Observer. His most recent novel, Spies, won the Whitbread Award for Fiction in 2002. Headlong was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, the Whitbread Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His thirteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen, and he has translated a number of works, mostly from the Russian. His most recent play, Democracy, received the Evening Standard Best Play Award and transferred to the Wyndhams Theatre after a hugely successful run at the National Theatre.
His most recent work, My Father's Fortune: A Life, a memoir of his father and his childhood, was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Biography Award.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
'Copenhagen' is available for sale on the Foyles bookstore website.