Kate Dorney is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is editor of the journal Studies in Theatre & Performance and the author of The Changing Language of Modern English Drama 1945-2005. In January 2010 she joined the Arts Council England's panel of Artistic Assessors.Ros Merkin is a Reader in Drama at Liverpool John Moores University. Her publications include Liverpool's Third Cathedral: the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, and she is currently working on a book for the 100th anniversary of Liverpool Playhouse in 2011 and one on the contribution of regional theatre to the theatre ecology."In ten essays this timely examination of England's regional stages ventures beneath the 1984-2009 banner headlines headlines of crisis, gloom and doom to explore national and local plans and politics in the context of individual cases of tragedy and neglect.As well as providing a concise summary of the detais and consequences of key documents this anthology offers valuable insights into the complex web of relationships and events that has shaped recent developments."Shirley Brown, Historian at Bristol old Vic, Bristol Review of Books, Issue 15, August 2010, pg 26".

this book, utterly absorbing for anyone interested in the national as opposed to simply the National Theatre, is concerned with the long struggle to establish how the Arts Council was to relate to the regions."Paul Allen, Fellow in Creativity and Performance at the University of Warwick in Prompt Vol. 59, Jan 2011.