David Rudkin, born in London, was brought up in an ethos of strict Evangelical piety where the Christian is in the world--fallen as it is--but not of it. The son of David Jonathan Rudkin, a pastor, and Anne Alice Martin Rudkin, a teacher, Rudkin was not allowed to read "worldly" books nor to visit the theater or cinema. In adolescence his imagination found an outlet in music--the one art that Evangelicalism is disposed to deny the devil's party. Rudkin attended King Edward's School in Birmingham from 1947 to 1955. He studied at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, from 1957 to 1961, when he received an M.A. degree. On entering the university, his mind was almost a tabula rasa for the impact of live drama. He was particularly impressed in 1958 by a production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party which demonstrated some of the possibilities of contemporary theater and stimulated him to write...