Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa is a biographical book by John Heilpern, in which he describes a journey by theatre director Peter Brook and a group of actors, including Helen Mirren, across the Sahara in Northwest Africa.
On its publication in the US by Knopf in 2007, The New Yorker described it as “compelling”, The Wall Street Journal as “masterful”, and The Philadelphia Inquirer as “a model of what a literary biography ought to be.” The Wall Street Journal named it one its Ten Best Books of the Year.
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He has also worked as Peter Hall’s assistant director on Tamburlaine at the National Theatre of Great Britain in 1976, and when he went to live in New York in 1980, he subsequently worked on Broadway as a librettist for Michael Bennett (of A Chorus Line).
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He began his career at The Observer of London, where his interviews with numerous cultural figures (including Graham Greene, Rudolf Nureyev, Henry Moore, Artur Rubinstein, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) received a British Press Award.
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John Heilpern has been married twice; one of his former wives is editor and writer Joan Juliet Buck.
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