This book records the design work and ephemera that survived in Richard Negri's personal archive, discovered in a large cardboard box found after his death in 1999. Richly illustrated (and published for the first time) with more than 300 high quality reproductions, a majority of which are full colour, the book also includes additional production photographs that reveal the link between the designs and their realisation, many of which were discovered in the Mander and Mitcheson and Victoria and Albert Museum's theatre collections.
A series of interviews were conducted with some of Negri's key colleagues and collaborators: actor Bernard Cribbins, director Frank Dunlop, composer George Hall, playwright Ronald Harwood and lighting designer Richard Pilbrow. Full recordings are now held in the British Library.
Transcripts of excerpts from those interviews, (together with some of the author's own with the designer Johanna Bryant, actress Avril Elgar, lighting designer/production manager Michael Williams and the Negri family) are threaded through and underpin the book's narrative.