Talking in the Library Series 4 - Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn rules at the pinnacle of the unclassifiable. When he writes a book of philosophy, he is a philosopher; when he writes a play, he is a playwright; when he writes a novel, he a novelist. In every category he is somebody’s favourite among modern writers, but what unites his work across all the categories is a linguistic fastidiousness simultaneously both poetic and critical. People who praise him in such solemn terms, however, are in danger of being reminded that he is also a master of comedy. He has been quietly scaring the vests off his generation of writers since he first proved how much he had to burn with his Guardian column in the early 1960s. From Cambridge and national Service he seemed to arrive at the peak of Fleet Street by rocket. After a detour into television he became such a permanent force in the theatre that by now a new Frayn play seems always ready to succeed another, and its subject will illuminate a whole modern historical area when it isn't a knock-down drag-out farce. Can an ordinary man live with the uncertainty of quantum mechanics? Can a physicist retain his trousers? Such questions intermingle also in his novels, which arrive either between, or simultaneously with, the plays.