«Perhaps the greatest actor-manager of his time», wrote the distinguished playwright Harold Pinter, whose first job in the theatre was with Anew McMaster’s classical theatre company and whose little book, called Mac, Pinter published as a tribute to him after his death. For over thirty years «Mac», as he was known, toured the Irish provinces giving the country people their first sight of Shakespeare. Anew McMaster died over fifty years ago, and though he figures largely in biographies by Micheal O’hAodha, Simon Callow and his brother-in-law, Micheál MacLiammóir, he has not had, as yet, a full book devoted to his life and work.
