Arena

Episode Synopsis

Now in her 80s, Peggy Ramsay is the most powerful and unconventional play agent in Britain. She started her agency in the mid-50s in a converted brothel in the West End and has been responsible for the careers of over 70 writers including David Mercer, Robert Bolt, John Arden, David Rudkin, Edward Bond, Willy Russell and Joe Orton. Ramsay was played by Vanessa Redgrave in the Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears. This film shows her working with playwrights David Hare, Caryl Churchill, Stephen Poliakoff and Christopher Hampton, follows her on an outing to the Barbican and taking a trip to Scarborough to visit Alan Ayckbourn.