Every few years a new book comes out on musical theatre or on the history of musicals and the most recent and most talked about is an American blockbuster of over 800 pages. Showtime, A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre by an academic professor Larry Stempel. Sometimes, these books are very specialist and often quirky. For example Scott Millar’s Strike Up The Band – A New History of Musical Theatre, says in its introduction – “Don’t look for Brigadoon or The Sound of Music here – they played no part in the evolution of the musical theatre.”
