This book records the design work and ephemera that survived in Richard Negri's personal archive, discovered in a large cardboard box found after his death in 1999. Also included are production photographs that reveal the link between the designs and their realisation, many of which were discovered in the Mander and Mitcheson and Victoria and Albert Museum's theatre collections.
Supporting my work on the book, and the website dedicated to Negri's work, I was fortunate to receive research funding from the University of the Arts, London that enabled a series of interviews with some of Negri's key colleagues and collaborators: Bernard Cribbins, Frank Dunlop, George Hall, Ronald Harwood and Richard Pilbrow. The interviews were conducted by Lydia O'Ryan and the full recordings are now held in the British Library.
Transcripts of interview excerpts, (together with some of my own with the designer Johanna Bryant, actress Avril Elgar, lighting designer/production manager Michael Williams and the Negri family) are threaded through and underpin the book's narrative.