About the Reader

James Wilby was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, and from there went on to study for a degree at Grey College, University of Durham, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

He is married to Shana Louise and has four children: Barnaby John Loxley, Florence Hannah Mary, Nathaniel Jerome and Jesse Jack.

A well-known actor on the stage and screen in the United Kingdom, Wilby's first appearance on screen was in the Oxford Film Company 1982 production Privileged alongside Hugh Grant . Wilby is best known to an international audience for roles in Maurice (1987), for which he received Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award with co-star Hugh Grant. Then he starred in A Handful of Dust (1988), Howards End (1992) and Gosford Park (2001) and Alain Robbe-Grillet's C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) co-starring Arielle Dombasle which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

On stage, he starred in the 1995 revival of John Osborne's A Patriot for Me by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre.

Geraldine McCaughrean has won many awards for her brilliant versions of classic texts. Here she retells the ten Shakespeare plays children are most likely to come across: Romeo and Juliet, Henry the Fifth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest. Written in stirring, colourful prose, this book makes a terrific introduction to Shakespeare and makes complex plots easy to follow. The text is punctuated with well-known quotations that give a taste of the real thing, and each play opens with a cast list explaining just who the characters are. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.