Arnold Wesker F.R.S.L was knighted in 2006 for 'services to drama'. He has written over forty-three plays, two opera libretti, various mechanical adaptations; four volumes of short stories, a children's book, and a novel; two volumes of essays, an autobiography, a diary,and a book on journalism; and recently his first volume of poetry. His plays have been produced in cities from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, from Paris to Moscow, from Montreal to Zurich, and The Kitchen - his most performed play has been performed yearly somewhere or other around the world for the last fifty years, and recently was revived by The National Theatre in 2011. Arnold Wesker was the recently featured in the Guardian ahead of revivals of his plays Chicken Soup With Barley (The Royal Court) and The Kitchen (The National Theatre): Guardian interview | Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker's plays, written over a period of more than fifty years, offer actors, male and female, a remarkable source of monologues covering themes such as friendship, death, old age, political disillusion, failed love, and self-discovery fuelled by emotions ranging through anger, joy, hope, fear, outrage, love, bewilderment, guilt, and comic irony.
This is Wesker's own selection of them. In addition to definitive versions of famous monologues such as Paul's speech from The Kitchen and Beatie Bryant's triumphant speech from the end of Roots, this volume constitutes an introduction to an unknown Wesker. To those already familiar with The Wesker Trilogy and other plays, this volume contains further evidence of this author's power and passion.The volume also includes synopses of the plays from which the monologues come.