When Ronald Reagan was shot and taken to hospital in 1981, the cabinet members, gathered at the White House, sent out for a copy of Richard Nixon's book Six Crises, which included a chapter on what happened when President Eisenhower was taken to hospital after a heart attack. They hoped for advice on how to proceed while the commander-in-chief was down. On learning that the first cabinet meeting in Ike's absence had begun with prayers, they did the same for Reagan.
The board of the National Theatre are currently looking for a successor for Sir Nicholas Hytner: initial interviews have just taken place, with favoured candidates going through to a final round in late summer. It might be excessive for board members to read Nixon's Six Crises as preparation – although, given the difficulty of living up to Hytner's legacy, prayers might be in order – but they would be well-advised to get hold of a copy of National Service: Diary of a Decade by Richard Eyre, who ran the theatre between 1987 and 1997.
Though deservedly still in print 10 years after they were first published, Eyre's book is only the second most famous volume of journals kept by an artistic director of the NT, with Peter Hall's Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle, published in 1983, more widely read. But Eyre's is the more pithily written, and more sharply analytical about both its author and others. Frequently, too, it seems alarmingly prescient. Here, for example, is Eyre, in his parallel role as a governor of the BBC, reporting on a meeting in November 1996: "Discussion at board meeting about salaries. Much talk of 'comparators', but surely there are no comparators: public service is public service, it can't be compared to the City or commercial TV … and their pensions – 50% of their salaries! For life!" (Salary and pension arrangements were subsequently improved for some senior managers, as the current controversy over huge pay-offs at the corporation has revealed.)
Equally relevant, 17 years on, are the sections that provide an incisive – and, for the NT's recruitment board, perhaps alarming – account of the difficulty of finding a new artistic director. In 1994, Eyre advises the board that he plans to leave within three years: the same time-scale followed by Hytner. After Eyre's announcement, the media and theatrical establishments immediately identify three leading contenders: Hytner himself, Stephen Daldry and Sam Mendes, with a big-name actor, Ian McKellen, appearing as a wild card. It's startling to note that, more than a decade and a half later, Daldry and Mendes have been again identified as frontrunners, with the Hytner position filled on this occasion by Michael Grandage or Dominic Cooke or Marianne Elliott. Kenneth Branagh takes McKellen's role as a star player who might be tempted to cross over to management. (Even more startlingly, Daldry and Mendes had again been courted without success in 2001, when Hytner was selected as Trevor Nunn's successor.)
In 1995, though, Eyre soon discovered that the field of candidates for the NT job is far more temperamental and prone to shy than any race-course lineup. Within days, Daldry and Hytner rule themselves out publicly and privately – as occurred, this time, with Grandage, Cooke, Elliott and (again) Daldry. Then – as has also reportedly happened this time – the recruitment committee become enthused about the possibility of Sam Mendes, but are led to believe that his commercial theatre commitments and desire to make movies (he had not yet directed American Beauty) will rule him out.
Over the next few months, Eyre's exasperation intensifies as it becomes clear that several strong candidates don't want to say yes, but can't quite bring themselves to say no. On 30 January 30, 1996, Sam Mendes has heard rumours that the board may turn to Trevor Nunn as a stop-gap candidate. Hearing this rumour, Mendes now tells Eyre: "Maybe I should do it", although the diarist concludes: "His heart wasn't in it." Mendes, however, remains in the frame, where he is suddenly joined by Stephen Daldry, who now does seem keen, until Eyre concludes on 6 February: "Both he and Sam would like to be offered the job and to decline it." Three days after this entry, Daldry berates Eyre for not promoting his candidacy, leading to the observation: "It's clear that he wanted to be heavily courted by the board – but in order that he could refuse. How was I to know that 'no' didn't mean 'no'?" Someone connected with the current recruitment process made exactly the same complaint to me recently in private about a number of candidates prominently promoted by newspapers, whose genuine availability is proving hard to ascertain.
Apart from the odd constancy of Mendes and Daldry as elusive possibles, the 1995-6 and 2013 searches are strikingly similar. Hytner, who considered himself too young to follow Eyre, did subsequently replace Nunn, and there are a number of younger directors – possible candidates might be Josie Rourke, Thea Sharrock and Edward Hall – who would similarly be expected to be frontrunners next time.
Another relevance of Eyre's account is he records the reluctance of the board to consider joint bids from duos such as Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid, or Ian McKellen plus one. This detail is highly apposite because I am told there have been several proposals of co-directorships to replace Hytner, with some of those who are unwilling to do the job alone offering themselves as part of a pairing or team. However, board members and Arts Council and government bureaucrats tend to prefer a single finger on the trigger to avoid the risk of policy and responsibility becoming blurred.
The good news for the current chairman, John Makinson, is that, whereas some names have dropped off the dream shortlist or hover uncertainly above it, strong unsuspected candidates have also emerged. For example, NT associate Rufus Norris (whose stand-out productions include Festen and, at the National, The Amen Corner) has made his interest clear, and has apparently been interviewed.
If the search to replace Hytner turns out precisely to parallel the search to fill Eyre's chair, then Daldry and Mendes will elude the recruiters for the third time running, and a senior theatrical figure will enact a Nunn-like interregnum: for which the most likely candidate would be ex-RSC chief Michael Boyd. The board would probably hope to avoid this, and to appoint a less expected figure, such as Norris, Ian Rickson or a regional success such as Chichester's Jonathan Church or Sheffield's Daniel Evans.
But anyone who is currently in the running should first read Eyre's entry for 25 September 1995, about the difficulty of scheduling the repertoire: "You have to guess at the number of performances for each show: ie, predict your successes or, worse, your failures. And if you want to transfer a show to the West End you have to predict getting an option on the actors. And your freedom to change the repertoire according to demand is restricted by the three-month print deadline of the brochure."
It's one of several passages in the book that suggest the job, for all that it's much-desired, may often be impossible: Eyre even confesses to suicidal thoughts, as had Hall before him. Whatever happens, the next occupant of the NT desk should keep National Service on it. And anyone else interested in the mechanics of public culture should seek out this remarkable and prescient book.
