David Edgar’s original plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company include Destiny (1975, John Whiting award)), Maydays (1983, Plays and Players award), Pentecost (1994, Evening Standard award), The Prisoner’s Dilemma (2001) and Written on the Heart (2011). His original plays for the National Theatre include Entertaining Strangers (1988), The Shape of the Table (1990) and Playing with Fire (2005). His adaptations include Albie Sach’s Jail Diary (1978), Mary Barnes (1979), a multi-award winning adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby (1980 in London, 1981 on Broadway and 1982 on Channel 4), Gitta Sereny’s Albert Speer (2000) and Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George (2008). He writes extensively in the press, particularly for the Guardian and the London Review of Books. He founded Britain’s first MA in Playwriting Studies and his book on playwriting, How Plays Work, was published in 2009. He is president of the Writers’ Guild.