You Won't Believe This But ...

Jane McCulloch was once dubbed a 'Renaissance woman' by the great American soprano Jessye Norman and her long career as a playwright theatre and opera director producer lyricist poet and latterly novelist is certainly testament to this. Jane's has been 'a life not without incident' - to quote her husband the theatre director Toby Robertson. Growing up with fiercely gifted but troubled parents she found herself with a front-row seat during a golden age of British theatre before forging her own career running theatre companies both in the UK and abroad and working with the likes of Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench. Inheriting her father's ability to 'collect' celebrities (to the occasional exasperation of her children) Jane proves a born raconteur describing amongst other things how she met Jackie Kennedy Onassis in an accidental Valium haze or managed to charm both Noël Coward and John Betjeman while still a teenager. Beyond the clear-eyed often moving stories however what emerges is an inspirational tale of a woman's fight for her survival in a very tough profession.