The former RSC actor Hugh Bonneville, who played Laertes opposite Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet but is currently best known as Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey, was at the Shakespeare Institute on August 7th
He was filming an interview with its Director, Professor Michael Dobson, for a television documentary about A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was especially pleased to discover that the Institute's library is such a rich resource for the study of theatrical history that it even holds photographs of Mr Bonneville playing Lysander in Dream at Regent's Park in 1986, his first professional engagement.