For many years he was the drama critic for The Scotsman. He won a Fringe First award for his co-adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. He has written and presented several arts documentaries for BBC Radio Scotland, Radio 4 and the World Service. He has frequently chaired events at the Edinburgh Book Festival and now does so at the Gothenburg Book Fair. He has published an acclaimed biography of theatre critic William Archer, who was the first to translate Ibsen into English, and was a consultant and contributor to a major Channel 4 documentary on John Osborne.