At Freddie's: Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald`s brilliant novel about life at an eccentric stage school.
In the 1960s, Freddie`s was the usual name for the Temple Stage School, which supplied the West End theatres with children for roles in everything from Shakespeare to pantomime. Freddie, the proprietress, is a formidable woman, of unknown age and provenance. But everybody who is anybody claims to know her. By sheer force of character and single-minded thrust she has turned herself into a national institution.

This story of what happened at Freddie`s is not only for theatre-lovers, but for people who care about children or hate them, or were - once upon a time - children themselves. In particular, it is for those of us who sometimes pretend to be what we are not - that is to say, act a little.