An audience with Derek Jacobi in conversation with Richard Clifford

Sir Derek Jacobi returns to Birmingham and to his home at the Old Rep.

There's something wonderfully fitting about Sir Derek Jacobi returning here, because this is really where it all began.

Fresh from Cambridge in 1960, a young Derek Jacobi walked through the doors of this very theatre, then the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on Station Street. These were his true formative years. Of his arrival, he has said: "I was absolutely the complete amateur, surrounded by very good professional actors and it was a great learning experience." It was here that Sir Laurence Olivier came to watch him play Henry VIII, invited him to London, and made him one of the founding members of the fledgling National Theatre. Derek was just 24.

Not bad for a boy from Leytonstone who won a scholarship to Cambridge, took Hamlet to the Edinburgh Fringe, and never really looked back.

Six decades on, Sir Derek's career defies superlatives. BAFTA winner. Tony Award winner. Two time Primetime Emmy winner. Three time Olivier Award winner. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to theatre.

His screen work spans I, Claudius, The Day of the Jackal, Gosford Park, Nanny McPhee, The King's Speech, Last Tango in Halifax, The Crown, the Gladiator films and, perhaps most unexpectedly, narrating the BBC children's series In the Night Garden. His Shakespeare is vast and celebrated, with landmark performances in Hamlet, Othello, Richard II, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing and more.

With him for the evening is his partner of nearly five decades, Richard Clifford, actor, director and devoted Shakespearean. Richard appeared in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and Love's Labour's Lost, has directed at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library for twenty years, and co teaches on the Shakespeare Authorship MA at Brunel University. He is the perfect companion for an evening of fun and learning with Derek Jacobi.

An extraordinary life in theatre. An extraordinary homecoming.