This crumbling ramshackle building has the status of a myth. It holds the fingerprints of the greatest writers and actors of our age. One said to me that if you squeeze the bricks, blood would come out.

I changed the organisation of the theatre away from Max towards what I thought George had done. George had run it with his Associates … to make sure there was never any single dominance of taste. George got himself surrounded by people who had often contradictory tastes to his own, but whom he trusted. Max had run it much more singularly. He would play to the extent of his own taste but what he tended to do … was to get people to work within his own parameters of taste. What I thought I'd do was set up a series of satellites who actually had much more freedom not just in producing but also commissioning.