Balancing Acts

by Nicholas Hytner 320pp, Jonathan Cape, £20, ebook £9.99

At the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary gala in 2013, Nicholas Hytner, the boss, tried to pop back to the green room – but found himself locked out. “Harder and harder I battered the door,” he recalls in his memoir, “hammering with my fist at a reinforced glass panel, which suddenly shattered.” This is one of several memorable glimpses he gives us of what it was like to do the toughest job in British theatre for 12 golden years, but his tone is often studiedly neutral. One yearns for more emoting, more gossip. Dominic Cavendish