I've spent a lifetime in the ebb and flow of power
It brings its gifts
But then it's an intoxicant
One must beware lest one consumes too much

The monarch.
Her most powerful subject.

Two women meet once a week for eleven years. One believes there is no such thing as society. The other has vowed to serve it.

Moira Buffini's wickedly funny hit comedy imagines what the world's most powerful women, Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II, talked about behind closed palace doors.

Winner of the 2014 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, Handbagged was first performed in September 2013 and returned to Kiln Theatre, London, in September 2022.

'A phenomenon.' Sunday Telegraph

'Perfectly pitched between the comic and the serious.' Guardian

Moira Buffini is one of the UK's leading dramatists. She has written acclaimed films and plays, including The Dig (BAFTA-nominated), Jane Eyre, Byzantium, Tamara Drewe, Dinner and Handbagged (Olivier Award winner). For young adults she has written Silence, A Vampire Story and the musical, wonder.land. She was co-creator and showrunner of the TV series Harlots. Songlight was her debut novel.