RAE pulled puppeteer's strings

The deadlines and practical requirements of the RAE had a direct impact on the work of Penny Francis, the school's puppetry tutor. She had to act fast to pull together A History of European Puppetry, a book she had been working on with Polish writer and lecturer Henryk Jurkowski, from the Warsaw Higher School of Theatre. The work traces puppetry from its very early beginnings through to the emergence of modernism.

Mrs Francis says that the experience of having to work rapidly on the book, which included learning how to compile an index, had made it easier to approach the next stage of the project: a second volume following the history through to the present day. "It may have seemed a strain at the time. But it certainly forced me to learn new skills so I will be much more efficient for the second volume."