Tutankhamun was the first show we (George Stiles and Anthony Drewe) wrote. It was the result of Anthony and I going to see a production of Sondheim's Sweeny Todd at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth.

It was a fantastic performance and neither of us had ever seen anything like it before. We were still students at the time, coming up to our finals, and we decided on the drive back to Exeter that we would have a go at writing a musical.

We booked the Northcott Theatre for the following March (1984) and started writing while revising for our finals. We postponed our places at teacher training college in Exeter for a year and set to work. We used student actors (and some ex-students like us) and we wrote, designed, built and arranged the show. To support ourselves we went off to decorate people's houses whenever we ran out of money and rehearsed over two terms.

We did eight performances at the Northcott in March 1984, including 2 matinees for schools, since Tutankhamun had just entered the syllabus. The whole run was sold out and the reviews were wonderful. We were spoilt for life....

We decided upon this particular story because Ants had seen the exhibition of King Tut's treasures as a kid in the late 70's and had a book at home on the "curse" aspects of the story.

We read it and liked the drama of the discovery. Then we tied a love-story of our own invention, which supposed that Tut's young widow, Ankhesenamun, was "waiting" for her lover amongst the circumpolar stars.

The Egyptians believed that the soul slept for 3,000 years before being sent on its' voyage across the night sky - and Tuts was discovered 3,000 years after his death. They also believed the dead "lived again" when their names were spoken.

We imagined a murder which left Tutankhamun's name obliterated from the records (as it was) and his "pauper's grave" hidden away from the world beneath the mouth of the tomb of Ramases...

All this inspired us to write this musical… The romance of the discovery, the tenacity and dogged determination of Carter, the youth and beauty of the Boy King, parted (probably) by murder from his 16-year old widow - almost a Romeo and Juliet story.... the breathtaking coincidence of the 3,000 year sleep and rebirth of this lost king...

Although I've still never seen the actual tomb - we both want to do that. We read every book we could find - read microfilm of the Times newspaper from the period,
went to the British Museum and got busy with papier-mache face-masks for the props!

We were lucky enough to meet the last Earl Carnarvon (when he was Lord Porchester...the title changes on the death of the father) - he was charming and very
encouraging. We had the family's blessing and saw a little of the house where they had just found a walled up passage with some Egyptian archives inside...very exciting. It is very near our favourite theatre, The Watermill near Newbury.

Tutankhamun was also performed in Nov 1992 in London at the Imagination Building in Store Street. Three workshop performances and a rewrite followed, commissioned by Gary Withers (the producer of Peter Pan) who remains very committed to the piece.

Tutankhamun the Musical was "of it's time" - written with huge enthusiasm and little knowledge by two naive graduates. It had flair in places and was well-received enough to make us want to keep writing. It was a great idea and we will rewrite it one day. It was very pop-based in most songs. I don’t think that is has been seen by a wider audience yet because it's a big, expensive show that isn't right yet. We still have to wrestle the story into better shape.

We hope to develop a concert-version of the show for the Royal Philharmonic or BBC Concert orchestra, performed with narrator and star-cast at the Festival

Hall. From there we can see what we have... Tim Rice and Elton John's Aida is on its way here from Broadway - that is going to make things tricky for a bit....

When thinking of an ideal cast for Tutankhamun who would we pick? A while ago it was Anthony Hopkins - but he's a bit long in the tooth now! Roger Allam or Philip Quast would be terrific - Dennis Quilley played Carnarvon at the workshop and was wonderful. The late and much-missed Martin Smith played Carter...

My favourite song from the show is Candle Flickers - the act one finale where they first break into the tomb. It culminates in the line that still gives me goose-bumps

"Carter? Carter, can you see anything?"

And then, after a heart-stopping pause

"Yes....yes, wonderful things."

We are often asked if anystrange things happened to us when we were writing Tutankhamun. Our lives changed irrevocably for the better!

We never took up the teacher-training posts (thousands of school kids should be grateful) and a year later we met Cameron Mackintosh and Tim Rice... (There was a silly piece in The Sun about someone hurting their foot in the show!!)

Do I believe in the curse of Tutankhamun?...

Death Shall Come on Swift Wings to He Who Defiles the Tomb of the Pharaoh....

who wouldn't?

The strange inner certainty which for 30 long years drove Howard Carter in his quest for the tomb of a young unknown Egyptian king finally led to the achievement of his life's ambition on 22nd November 1922. On that day, in the presence of his long term patron Lord Carnarvon and with only a few days to go before their license to excavate the area was due to expire, the first stone was removed from the wall of the tomb in which the boy king we now know as Tutankhamun had lain undisturbed for 3,245 years.

In Carter's own words, "It was the day of days, the most wonderful that I have ever lived through and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again."

For Carter it was the end of a search extending back to 1892, when he joined his first expedition to Egypt, but also the beginning of six tumultuous years of problems and disagreement - notably including legal arguments with the Egyptian authorities and battles with the world press for whom the discovery of such a complete set of the most beautiful burial objects ever found soon became one of the great news stories of the years between the two World Wars.

Stubborn as ever, he nevertheless managed to complete his task and to reveal not only more and more treasures but evidence of the way in which Tutankhamun's enemies had pursued him beyond the grave, obliterating his name wherever possible to ensure that he died a second death and vanished from History.

By revealing the boy king's tomb to the modern world, Carter and Carnarvon rescued him from the fate intended by his enemies and fulfilled the terms of the funerary inscription "to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again." But there will always be those who believe Carnarvon paid the price for his temerity, struck down by a disease which led to his death in Egypt less thank six months after the great discovery made possible by his patronage.

At five minutes to two on the morning of April 5th 1923. Lord Carnarvon died at the Continental hotel in Cairo. At exactly the same moment all the lights of the city went out and far away on the Carnarvon estate in England, his dog howled inconsolably......... and died.