[3] He began his career at The Observer of London,[3] where his interviews with numerous cultural figures (including Graham Greene, Rudolf Nureyev, Henry Moore, Artur Rubinstein, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) received a British Press Award.
[3] It tells the story of a historic journey made by Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors (including the young Helen Mirren) from Algiers across the Sahara Desert and then through West Africa, in search of a new form of theatre.
The current paperback edition of Conference of the Birds, re-issued in America by Routledge, was described by The Sunday Telegraph as "one of the best books about theatre ever written".
First published in the UK by Chatto & Windus in 2006 under the title A Patriot for Us, the Osborne biography received the award for Best Theatre Book of the Year.
On its publication in the US by Knopf in 2007, The New Yorker described it as "compelling", The Wall Street Journal as "masterful", and The Philadelphia Inquirer as "a model of what a literary biography ought to be".