CITIES WERE A MISTAKE:

His working life -- he routinely put in seventeen-hour days -- was facilitated by a vast expense account with teams of secretaries, chefs and chauffeurs. He died in 1981, aged ninety-two. Considering what he built, his life sounds like a cause for celebration. Except for one thing: Moses was a psychopath. If power is a drug, then Moses was a massive user. His undoubted genius hid a vindictive, cruel personality that became deranged. His façade was ever the humble public servant. Yet he despised the poor, especially if they were black or Puerto Rican.

Though there is talk of a Netflix series, there is still no film about this extraordinary man. The Bridge Theatre in London, however, has taken up his story. Nicholas Hytner is directing a new play the theater has commissioned from David Hare. "It's the greatest work of non-fiction I've ever read," says Hytner of Caro's book. "The first thing you realize is that there isn't a play in the Caro book because it's just too immense. The play David has written is narratively narrower than the book. It's about who Moses is, what he stands for, and what might resonate for audiences today." Ralph Fiennes will play Moses. Hytner reckons "that slightly mad glint in his eye" should come in useful. Hare, incidentally, has form at writing villains. Back in 1985, he co-invented a fictitious newspaper tycoon, Lambert Le Roux, for his comedy Pravda. Anyone who saw it will remember Anthony Hopkins, fists balled, face jutting, like a human mastiff: 'Who are you? You're fired.'

"This is a much subtler play than Pravda," says Hytner. "It's not a big, ribald epic. It's a more private play." It presumably helps that villains are all the rage and good box office? "I wouldn't say we are doing this just because Moses was a villain. But it is true -- if you get a villain right, it always works."

Moses was actually a most sophisticated man. He was a visiting Rhodes scholar at Oxford who wrote a book about the British civil service. He loved the English poets. He was a big Dr. Johnson fan and he knew screeds of Shakespeare by heart. Throughout his life, he was dapper, handsome, always the perfect host, always civil to his wife.

It is the case against Moses that makes the book so gripping. 

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