Raw Talent - Fifty Years of the National Student Drama Festival

Published as part of the Festival's golden anniversary, Raw Talent celebrates the many hundreds of student productions that would otherwise be unjustly forgotten

Lavishly illustrated with over 100 photographs of the most outstanding productions presented at the NSDF, it features reminiscences from many of the festival's alumni, including Simon Russell Beale, John Nettles, Tim Pigott-Smith, Alex Jennings, Michael Billington, Alan Yentob, Polly Teale and Roger Michell

Raw Talent tells the story of the festival year by year, showing changes in theatrical taste against the back-drop of post-war Britain - from its modest beginnings in the 1950s, when it was created by The Sunday Times and the National Union of Students to the cementing of its status in the 1960s, when winners would be given a West End season

It also relates the problems of the early 1970s with the NUS flexing its revolutionary muscles (under its President, the young Jack Straw); and the challenges of working in the philistine culture of the Thatcherits 1980s, through to the modern day

It includes an Appendix containing the complete list of the plays produced at the Festival