To Kill a Mockingbird
Gielgud Theatre, London

For almost all her 89 years, Harper Lee was notable for publishing just one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). It rooted in US culture two powerful archetypes: the heroically honest lawyer, in Alabama attorney Atticus Finch, and the sassy young woman narrator, a sort of feminised Huck Finn, represented by Scout Finch. She recalls her father’s 1934 defence of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of a capital crime, despite the risks to Atticus’ business, social standing and, from the Ku Klux Klan, life.

Just before Lee died, a 2015 sequel, Go Set a Watchman, featured an older Atticus and Scout somewhat compromising the glowing characterisations about which students write so many essays. Fears that the “second” book was really framing chapters cut from the first caused a court case. And, further illustrating the book’s status, there were also legal proceedings attempting to block a stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin, for being too free. But the script eventually premiered on Broadway in 2018 and now reaches London.