The Tempest

Julie Taymor is an award winning director and designer. The Tempest is her fourth feature film. Frida, her second, received two Academy Awards. Her stage adapation of The Lion King received two Tony Awards, including Best Director of a Musical. Her production of The MagicFlute for the Metropolitan Opera has become a modern classic. Jonathan Bate is well known as a critic, biographer, broadcaster and Shakespeare scholar. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick and chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works. He is also the author of many books including The Genius of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare and John Clare: A Biography, which won Britain's two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge University, and a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was made CBE in the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours List.

The book of "The Tempest" is both a handsome edition of Julie Taymor's eminently readable adaptation of Shakespeare's play and a stunning visual narrative of her new film, which stars Helen Mirren as Prospera, the magician/alchemist in a bold, gender-switched realization. One of Shakespeare's greatest and most popular plays, "The Tempest "begs to be visualized by a master filmmaker. Taymor's definitive film version combines romance and tragicomedy in one powerful story. She uses all of her considerable storytelling skills to make the action and atmosphere of the play come vividly to life. With an artist's touch, she combines extraordinary locations with experimental visual effects to create the magic that suffuses this great work.