Dame Harriet Walter in conversation with John Caird

Oxford Festival of the Arts is delighted to welcome Dame Harriet Walter, one of the UK’s most revered actors, to the Festival Marquee on 30 June. Dame Harriet will be in conversation with stage director John Caird, and there will be the opportunity for questions from the audience.

Dame Harriet’s recent TV credits include Sky Atlantic’s Succession, Ted Lasso, The End, Killing Eve, Belgravia, The Crown, Downton Abbey, and Law and Order UK, but she is perhaps best known for her illustrious and distinguished career in theatre and especially in performing the leading classical roles at the Royal Court, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. Since 2012 Dame Harriet has been taking on some of Shakespeare’s leading male roles, notably Brutus, Henry IV and Prospero in the Donmar Theatre’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy directed by Phyllida Lloyd.

She was awarded a CBE in 2000 an Honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Birmingham in 2001 and became a Dame in 2011 and an honorary fellowship of her alma mater LAMDA in 2022.

John Caird is an award-winning English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas, such as Les Misérables (2012) and Estella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol with a Twist (2020). He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and was for many years a regular director at the National Theatre. John attended MCS from 1959-1967 (OW ’67).