For over six decades, John Elsom has written with clarity, depth, and authority on theatre, politics, cultural policy, and modernity. His books are cited internationally, taught at universities, and read by historians, artists, and students of contemporary politics.
INTELLIGENT – INFORMED – INCISIVE
the voice of reason in a deluded world
Professor John Pick, Arts Economist
Dr. John Elsom is a writer, theatre historian, cultural critic, and international arts consultant. He has worked as a theatre critic for the BBC, served as arts editor for The World & I magazine in the United States, and chaired the International Association of Theatre Critics, a UNESCO-affiliated organization.
He has advised governments, universities, and cultural institutions across Europe, Asia, and North America and has received international awards for his contribution to culture during and after the Cold War.
LATEST WORKS – 2026
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Theatre
Post-War British Theatre
Routledge, 1976, 1980 and re-issued 2014
The definitive account of British theatre from 1945 to the mid-1970s, Elsom traces the seismic shifts that reshaped the stage.
The History of the The National Theatre
– Cape, 1978 –
A comprehensive history of the National Theatre from its origins to its first years at the South Bank.
Erotic Theatre
– Secker, 1972 –
A study of sexuality and the stage not as scandal or titillation, but as a serious critical enquiry into how theatre.
Theatre Outside London
Macmillan, 1971
A survey of the flourishing regional theatre movement that was transforming British cultural life beyond the capital.
Post-War British Theatre Criticism (Ed.)
Routledge, 1976, 1980 and re-issued 2014
An edited anthology of the best British theatre criticism from the post-war decades.
Cold War Theatre
Routledge, 1992, and re-issued 2014
Between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, theatre on both sides of the Iron Curtain was a battlefield for ideas, national identity, and artistic freedom. John Elsom was uniquely placed to write this account as President of the International Association of Theatre Critics from 1985 to 1992. The result is a vivid, wide-ranging, and deeply personal history of the theatre as a political instrument and a space of resistance.
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Is Shakespeare Still
Our Contemporary
– Routledge, 1989 –
First posed by the critic Jan Kott in 1964, the question of Shakespeare’s contemporary relevance has never been answered but only endlessly reopened. This collection, edited by Elsom and arising from a series of international IATC conferences, gathers responses from directors, critics, and scholars across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The answers together form a fascinating portrait of how Shakespeare functions as a mirror for each generation’s preoccupations. The book remained in print for twenty years.
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The world and I
As fine and thoughtful a theatre critic as you will find anywhere,” Michael Marshall, Managing Editor, The World & I, US monthly magazine.
In 1979, John joined the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC/AICT), a UNESCO NGO (Non-Governmental Agency), which brings together those (world-wide) who write about the theatre – journalists, academics, and literary managers. The Cold War, which had dominated international relations since the end of WW2, was coming to an end. Following a period of détente, the barriers that separated East from West were broken down, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. John was elected in Mexico as an IATC Vice-President in 1984, and as world President in Rome in 1985, a role that he retained until 1992, twice re-elected. His aim was to overcome the decades of Cold War hostilities, encourage the appreciation of diverse cultures, and to support conferences and festivals.
culture and politics
Exploring the intricate relationship between cultural movements and political shifts, this section delves into how societal values shape power dynamics and vice versa.
Missing the Point: The Rise of High Modernity and the Decline of Everything Else
A sweeping cultural diagnosis of the late twentieth century and its discontents. Elsom argues that Western societies have progressively lost the ability to locate meaning outside the economic, technological and managerial systems, they have created to organize themselves. Art, politics, religion, and community have all been reshaped in the image of modernity, at the cost of the very human experiences they were meant to serve. Sharp, wide-ranging, and deeply informed by six decades of cultural observation.
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State of Paralysis
State of Paralysis is the study of the forces that prevents Western democratic institutions from responding effectively to the challenges they face be it from the structural inertia of parliamentary systems or the cultural inability to imagine genuine alternatives. Drawing on a lifetime’s engagement with British and European politics, John dentifies the habits of mind and institutional arrangements that produce paralysis in the face of crisis, and asks what it would take to break them.
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Sliding Scales: The Uncertain History of Modern Democracy
From the Athenian agora to the algorithmic present, democracy has never been what its defenders claimed or its critics feared. It has always been a sliding scale tilting toward the autocratic in times of fear, toward the participatory in times of confidence, and perpetually in danger of mistaking its own rhetoric for reality. In twelve chapters presented in the Sliding Scales, Elsom traces the key moments in that history, with particular attention to the British experience and the global pressures now testing democratic institutions everywhere.
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Missing the Point: The Rise of High Modernity and the Decline of Everything Else
A sweeping cultural diagnosis of the late twentieth century and its discontents. Elsom argues that Western societies have progressively lost the ability to locate meaning outside the economic, technological and managerial systems, they have created to organize themselves. Art, politics, religion, and community have all been reshaped in the image of modernity, at the cost of the very human experiences they were meant to serve. Sharp, wide-ranging, and deeply informed by six decades of cultural observation.
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State of Paralysis
State of Paralysis is the study of the forces that prevents Western democratic institutions from responding effectively to the challenges they face be it from the structural inertia of parliamentary systems or the cultural inability to imagine genuine alternatives. Drawing on a lifetime’s engagement with British and European politics, John dentifies the habits of mind and institutional arrangements that produce paralysis in the face of crisis, and asks what it would take to break them.
Quote By: Name
Sliding Scales: The Uncertain History of Modern Democracy
From the Athenian agora to the algorithmic present, democracy has never been what its defenders claimed or its critics feared. It has always been a sliding scale tilting toward the autocratic in times of fear, toward the participatory in times of confidence, and perpetually in danger of mistaking its own rhetoric for reality. In twelve chapters presented in the Sliding Scales, Elsom traces the key moments in that history, with particular attention to the British experience and the global pressures now testing democratic institutions everywhere.
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Contemporary Review
One of Britain’s oldest and most respected journals of opinion, Contemporary Review was founded in 1866 and counted Ruskin, Gladstone, and Aldous Huxley among its contributors. Elsom wrote for the magazine throughout the 1980s which was a decade of upheaval in the British cultural policy contributing up to six articles a year on theatre, arts, and the politics of culture. His essays fed directly into Liberal Party arts policy debates and were widely reprinted internationally.
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State of Paralysis
State of Paralysis is the study of the forces that prevents Western democratic institutions from responding effectively to the challenges they face be it from the structural inertia of parliamentary systems or the cultural inability to imagine genuine alternatives. Drawing on a lifetime’s engagement with British and European politics, John dentifies the habits of mind and institutional arrangements that produce paralysis in the face of crisis, and asks what it would take to break them.
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Performance
The Well-Intentioned Builder
Cockpit Theatre, London, 1966; National Theatre of Craiova, Romania, 2004.
A woman calls a builder to fix a damp patch in her childhood nursery. He fixes it and then, finding deeper rot beneath the surface, proceeds to dismantle the entire house. First staged at the Cockpit Theatre in 1966, the play was revived nearly four decades later at the National Theatre of Craiova, Romania, where it was received as if it had been written yesterday.
One More Bull
Cockpit Theatre, London, 1966
A sharp, comic piece staged at the Cockpit Theatre in 1966. One More Bull deploys comedy as its primary instrument, with an eye for the absurdities of institutional behavior that would run through his writing for decades.
The Man of the Future is Dead
Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2006; Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest, 2007
A meditation on utopia, disappointment, and the gap between the futures we imagine and the ones we actually inhabit. Staged at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and subsequently at the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest, one of Romania’s great theatrical institutions, the play reflects Elsom’s long engagement with Eastern European culture and his understanding of what the collapse of ideological certainty feels like from the inside.
Old Boy
2009
Tristan Bates Theatre, London
Second Time Round
2011
International Festival of Musical Theatre, Bucharest, 2007
Peacemaker
ADC Theatre, Cambridge – 1956
Maui
Libretto for the opera by Barry Anderson, 1958
The Turning World
Unteatru, Bucharest – 2011
Malone Dies
Edinburgh International Festival
(and on tour) – 1984
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Hedda Gabler
Edinburgh Fringe Festival – Aug 2006 – Bulandra Theatre – 2007
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Peacemaker
ADC Theatre, Cambridge – 1956
Maui
Libretto for the opera by Barry Anderson, 1958
The Turning World
Unteatru, Bucharest – 2011
Journalism
‘…the first rough draft of history.’
Philip L. Graham, former Washington Post President
The world and I
As fine and thoughtful a theatre critic as you will find anywhere,” Michael Marshall, Managing Editor, The World & I, US monthly magazine.
In 1979, John joined the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC/AICT), a UNESCO NGO (Non-Governmental Agency), which brings together those (world-wide) who write about the theatre – journalists, academics, and literary managers. The Cold War, which had dominated international relations since the end of WW2, was coming to an end. Following a period of détente, the barriers that separated East from West were broken down, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. John was elected in Mexico as an IATC Vice-President in 1984, and as world President in Rome in 1985, a role that he retained until 1992, twice re-elected. His aim was to overcome the decades of Cold War hostilities, encourage the appreciation of diverse cultures, and to support conferences and festivals.
The London Magazine
During the 1960s, John was the theatre correspondent and talent scout at Paramount Pictures; and taught part-time at the City Literary Institute, Drury Lane, London, where he started a theatre group. He contributed articles mainly on the theatre to The London Magazine, then edited by the poet and cricket correspondent, Alan Ross. This was London’s leading cultural magazine, founded in 1732, which published poems, short stories, and social criticism, from a wide range of international writers.
Contemporary review
The Contemporary Review (CR), a monthly magazine, was founded in 1866 as a vehicle for the growing community of writers who sought to express their hopes for a brave new world, transformed by science, democracy, and the Industrial Revolution. It was ‘left-of-centre’, with unofficial links to the Liberal Party, progressively Christian, or humanist in outlook. Its early contributors included John Ruskin, W.E. Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, J.M. Barrie, and Aldous Huxley.
Clearing out the attic: why our political system needs a complete re-think
PR, Lord’s reform, Gordon Brown’s ‘people’s convention’: they have their merits, says John Elsom, but we need to go further
The Catch-22 of electoral reform under the British system is that you must win a parliamentary majority by first-past-the-post before you can introduce proportional representation (PR). By some quirk of nature, this is rarely the priority of a party that has just got into power. Reforming zeal evaporates. They hum and haw. There may be a case for a fairer system, they concede, but there are more urgent matters in their in-trays, and their government should lead from the front and not be distracted by constitutional niceties …
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