Christmas books: Drama

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The threat of terrorist action may have deterred audiences from venturing into city centres but, for theatre-lovers, the past year has produced a host of attractions that can be enjoyed from the safety of their armchairs. Publishers have brought out books in a range of categories that rival the ones that Polonius identified in the Elsinore Players: historical; biographical; academic; journalistic; pictorial; humorous.

The hub of the British theatre is London's South Bank and, to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of Denys Lasdun's building, Lyn Haill has put together a pictorial account, In Rehearsal at the National (Oberon, £19.99). With pictures of about half the 400 or so productions seen there and contributions from many leading theatrical photographers, including John Haynes, Catherine Ashmore, Ivan Kyncl, Donald Cooper and Nobby Clark, this is a delightful record of the intimacy and intensity of the National's rehearsal rooms.

Making a guest appearance at the National this Christmas is its younger, friskier cousin, the National Theatre of Brent, with a new show, The Wonder of Sex. To mark the occasion, artistic director Desmond Oliver Dingle has revised his Complete History of the World (Nick Hern, £9.99). Owing more to Sellar and Yeatman than to Simon Schama (who has been inveigled into providing an introduction), Dingle's tome – with its singular account of world events from the decline of ancient Greece "due to excessive theatre-going and lolling about in the nude all day" to the Age of Reason, presided over by René Descartes and Renée Zellweger, will entrance the company's many fans.

An equally hilarious offering comes from the venerable thespian Nicholas Craig, ably assisted by Christopher Douglas and Nigel Planer. I, an Actor (Methuen, £9.99) is at once an addition and antidote to the brand of biographical manual pioneered by Simon Callow. Reissued to take account of his recent triumphs, particularly his 1994 role in Fist F***ing at the Royal Court and his bewhiskered performance opposite such scions of the theatrical aristocracy as Darren Fiennes, Sharon Cusack and Fatima Redgrave in the costume drama Dashington Manor, Craig's book offers a wealth of cod advice for aspiring actors and a feast of anecdotes.

Two of Craig's senior colleagues, Sian Phillips and Timothy West, have published autobiographies this year. Public Places (Hodder, £20) is the second volume of Phillips's beautifully written life-story. The great and the good of the acting world – the Denches, Gielguds, Ashcrofts and Masseys – glide across its pages, but its heart lies in Phillips's account of her life with Peter O'Toole. "Marry Sian and become a famous couple in the theatre," Emlyn Williams told the young O'Toole, but he reckoned without the actor'' cruelty, self-destruction and overweening ego. When someone asked Phillips how she combined her private life and career, O'Toole interjected that "She doesn't have a career. She has jobs." Phillips proves just how wrong he was.

Unlike O'Toole and Phillips, Timothy West and Prunella Scales have become a respected theatrical couple with joint appearances across the country as well as illustrious individual careers. West's autobiography, A Moment Towards the End of the Play (Nick Hern, £15.99), is the antithesis of the green-room gossip school of memoirs. Anecdotes abound (the one about Sir John Gielgud and the urinating goat is priceless) but equally noteworthy are West's dispatches from the regions and his diatribes on the dumbing-down of modern culture.

Those in search of a definitive collection of Gielgud anecdotes should turn to John G (Hodder, £20), Sheridan Morley's authorised biography of the greatest classical actor of our time. Unearthing a hoard of unseen material, in particular the actor's letters to his mother, Morley meticulously charts Gielgud's career. Focusing as much on his private demons as public triumphs, Morley offers a sexual and social history of the 20th-century stage.

In Show and Tell (Bloomsbury, £20), John Lahr, who recently edited Kenneth Tynan's diaries, continues Tynan's series of New Yorker profiles of cultural icons. His selection, drawn from across the Atlantic apart from the unlikely duo of Ingmar Bergman and Eddie Izzard, features such luminaries as Woody Allen, Frank Sinatra and Arthur Miller. Lahr writes that "If you can find the pulse of the artist, you can find the pulse of the art". This collection proves his diagnostic power.

Two books for the serious theatre student are A Pocket Guide to 20th-Century Drama by Stephen Unwin and Carole Woddis (Faber, £7.99) and On Acting by Mary Luckhurst and Chloe Veltman (Faber, £10.99). The former provides an expert introduction to 50 of the finest plays of the last century. The latter comprises interviews with a varied group of performers. Their informed comments on inspiration, technique, research and, in particular, the vagaries of casting offer a convincing riposte to Hitchcock's notorious comparison of actors and cattle.

Although most celebrated for films, Marlene Dietrich spent much of her later life touring the world in a one-woman stage show. Marlene Dietrich (Thames & Hudson, £29.95) is a lavishly illustrated portrait of the actress's career with commentaries from, among others, Jean Cocteau and Ernest Hemingway. Whether allowing herself to be deified by Von Sternberg or applying the pincer-like wig that produced an improvised face-lift, Dietrich, like the legion of drag queens who have impersonated her, could truly claim to be her "own special creation". This book is a gorgeous testament to one of the last century's most glittering stars.