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Extreme fear mixed with total indifference."A WEEK later: "Worst week yet. Ours must be more inclined to spectacle and 'interpretation', but maintaining a responsibility to the text And I need to introduce a note of anarchy to the theatre. But there isn't an anarchistic gesture now that can't be immediately assimilated. The climate is dark and savage, and we should respond to that, not engage in the chummy humour of the times: them grinning at us grinning at them."After several months as de facto Director I became official in September."1st September 1988 A week of almost absurd misery and insecurity. We agreed that the problem was to define what the approach was to the classics - ie what is our voice? PH's [Peter Hall's] voice was utterly clear text, morally neutral, visually uninflected. The choice is bound to be construed as my colours nailed to the mast.""20th January 1988: Talk to David H [Hare] about the programme.

I see the possibility of making administrative sense of the building but not artistic sense. What can I do? What plays? And how to do them? How to make meaning of the work. To allow it to be assimilated within the orbit of the monarchy is to add another rivet to the theocratic state of Britain whose religion is the monarchy Victor Mishcon supports Max `We walk in troublous seas,' he says. Oh England! Most of the Board seem to support me."A FEW days later: "Wearying week at the NT Spirits rising and falling from hour to hour. Max [Rayne, then chairman of the board] clearly wants it desperately - 'an accolade' for the theatre. Bit like Judith Hart accepting a damehood on behalf of the Third World Max thinks that the NT's image would be enhanced I disagree and say so.

It's a useful distinction from the RSC, and the demotic 'NT' is attractive. Is this a metaphor for my life to be? Is this a sign? Caught the train this morning to Leicester v early. Photos in most of the papers of this elusive `Richard Eyre' character I hardly recognised him. I feel no stirrings of epic purpose, no sense of destiny, and my ribs still ache from being sick." A YEAR later I am attending my first Board Meeting: "11 January 1988 The spectre of the `Royal' National Theatre walks abroad. I felt very sick after the press conference, where I'd felt as if I was performing a character called `Richard Eyre' - about whom I didn't have enough information to give a credible performance. At first I put sickness down to nerves, but I got home and was violently, painfully sick.

Richard pulped himself a guava and watched the Thames streaming past his window. "Learn about something no one in the world knows about - or has the time to find out about." And she'd taken him down to an auction at the British Library, owned by Camelot since the 2030s, and now selling the collection to offset losses on the Global Lottery. But here is an entry from the day that it was announced that I would become Director: "17 January 1987 Yesterday I became Director Designate of the NT A bizarre sensation. I've often been asked if, like my predecessor, I would publish my diaries, and I've responded shirtily, and perhaps sanctimoniously, that I couldn't break faith with the people who have worked with me and trusted me, that I couldn't face the small betrayals of faith - the revelations of indiscretions, of insincerity, of half-truths and expedient flattery. I write it partly for myself, and partly for an audience which I've never troubled to define: to say "posterity" would be pompous, and to say "for publication" would be (until now) untrue. And that would keep him in opera tickets for the rest of his life.. To remember that there was a time when I felt that making a success of running the National Theatre was as improbable as scaling the north face of the Eiger I have to look at my diary.

It reminded him of the flow of his digital wealth from satellite to satellite. "Get studying."He'd spent five years converting this data into a manageable form, and another two identifying clients who could make use of it His mother had been right: it was money. "This is money," his mother had said, as her staff loaded up Lot 89, a hundred suitcases stuffed full of leather-bound books and dusty CD Roms. Computers weren't discriminating enough for this process, and, moreover, certain clients required access to texts that were not easily available in electronic form.He owed his fortune to his mother, who'd told him to specialise and do it quickly.