My guest today is the actor Michael Maloney, now Patron of Bard in the Bookshop. Michael has played some of the biggest parts in the Shakespeare canon for the Royal Shakespeare Company (Hal, Edgar, Romeo, Hamlet... twice) and worked alongside giants like Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn and John Barton. On screen, he's a longtime Kenneth Branagh collaborator, appearing in Henry V, Hamlet, In the Bleak Midwinter and Belfast. We recorded this in his dressing room in Cardiff, while we were touring together with Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, in which Michael played the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot . This episode is a masterclass in speaking Shakespeare from someone who has done it all his life, and a short history of theatre besides.