In his years as a drama critic for the New York Times, Mel Gussow has developed special insights into the work and lives of contemporary playwrights. For more than twenty years, he has been meeting Tom Stoppard to talk about his plays and the people and ideas that have helped to shape his career. This book begins with transcripts of nine conversations from the seventies and eighties which have never been published in Britain before and never published anywhere in full.

Completing the volume are two lengthy interviews conducted especially for this book and appearing in print for the first time. They took place before and during the preparation of Stoppard's latest play, Indian Ink.

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Stoppard and Gussow first meet in 1972, when the talk is of Stoppard's early work such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and The Real Inspector Hound and of his new play Jumpers. Meeting regularly every three or four years after that, whether in London or New York, there is always a new play to discuss - Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing - and therefore a new impetus to the ongoing investigation into Stoppard's working methods and sources of inspiration.

Finally, in their most recent encounters, with Arcadia running in the West End, Hapgood running in New York and Indian Ink opening in London, they not only delve into the background of each of these plays but range widely over topics such as Stoppard's chihlhood in India, his feelings about the press, his attitudes to other writers and his life outside the theatre.