BEING rich and mad may not have done much harm to George III but for Nazi sympathiser John Amery it proved a fateful combination.

The son of politician Leo Amery, who served in Churchill's wartime cabinet, John Amery made repeated attempts to escape from Harrow school where he was deemed an unruly and immoral pupil.

The extraordinary true story of John Amery, who made propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis and was arrested for high treason, premieres at Watford Palace Theatre next week. An English Tragedy, written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood for The Pianist who has been nominated again for the film The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, deals with Amery's arrest in Italy and subsequent trial in London in November, 1945.

Actor Richard Goulding, who plays John Amery, has done considerable research for the role.

Richard, a classics graduate from Oxford and former head of classics at St Columbus School in St Albans, is the son of Jeremy Goulding who was headmaster of Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree from 1996 to 2001. Richard says that Amery's psychiatric condition would certainly have been under review in today's society. John's father, Leo, even commissioned Dr Edward Glover to write a psychiatric report on his son that could be used at his trial.

"These days he would have been diagnosed with something, some sort of mental condition," says Richard. "He was one of the more colourful people in the last 100 years, and yet he's not that well-known. He was a lively youth, he had tantrums, was sexually deviant and always bankrupt, but he enjoyed life. He was a total embarrassment to his parents who loved him but were disappointed. He could be utterly charming and delightful. He loved dancing and wanted to be a film director."

A staunch anti-communist, Amery moved to Spain in 1936 to take part in the Spanish Civil War. He also acted as an intelligence officer for the Italian volunteers and after meeting the French fascist leader, Jacques Doriot, Amery lived in France where he was recruited by the Nazis.

"He was courted by them," says Richard. "His political name made him quite a catch. He'd gathered fascist sentiments from various influences in Europe and was vehemently anti-Communist and anti-Semitic, they were the same in his mind."

Unlike the unhinged character he portrays, Richard feels his profession is keeping him together.

"You have to know yourself and be able to cope with yourself and your life experiences," he says. "It's very exposing."

Richard's understanding of historical texts has allowed him to get beneath Amery's skin, but he says, learning how to act is something you can't learn from books.

"The drawback of a classical education is it's quite an academic background and acting is anything but - it's instinct rather than intellect. Drama school is an odd place really, it's not a conducive learning environment. You have to have passion for it, it's very tough. It's a human education where you develop as a person as well as an actor."

Richard's development has also been a bit of a trial by fire. While still training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London last year, he was snapped up by the Royal Shakespeare Company to audition for the role of Konstantin in Trevor Nunn's world touring production of King Lear and The Seagull alongside Sir Ian McKellen and Frances Barber.

"It was beyond my wildest dreams, I thought the phone call about the audition was a wind up. I remember seeing a poster and I thought wow Gandalf is doing Lear, and I thought what a dream that would be to be in it. Then three months later I was. You have this dream it will happen, and when it happens it doesn't feel real for a while, and then it becomes your daily job.

"I was absolutely terrified, shaking like a leaf about being in a room with Trevor Nunn, Frances Barber and Ian McKellen, but after travelling to three different places, Melbourne Los Angeles Sinapore I was much more confident. Most of the world's famous have been in to see it and it cannot help but steel me for the experiences ahead, there's not much that could faze me now. A couple of days after returning from LA, I was on holiday in Suffolk and I got a phone call about An English Tragedy and they sent me the script. It's the best thing I've read in years. One of the most extraordinary trials of legal history is staged in the play and I didn't know anything about the story. Amery was charged with treason but he had an utter belief he was doing the right thing by his country. He was a victim - a casualty of the world revolution. There are hundreds of historical references to the family and the trial. His father was very right wing. There's a wonderful twist in the play. There's a very crucial piece of information that's not entirely revealed in the play, but the whole thing hinges on it. It's not really about politics, but what it is like for a father whose son flies in the face of everything he's been taught. That kind of behaviour can destroy a family."

The world premiere of An English Tragedy runs from Thursday, February 14 to Saturday, March 8 at 7.45pm. Matinees Wednesday, February 27 and March 5 at 2.30pm. Tickets: 01923 225671

The works of Ronald Harwood

Selected plays: After The Lions (1982) The Dresser (1983) and screenplay for the film starring Albert Finney and Sir Tom Courtenay Taking Sides (1995) Quartet (1999) Collaboration (2008) for The Chichester Festival Selected screenplays: The Browning Version, 1994, with Albert Finney The Pianist, 2002, won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Starred Adrien Brody Oliver Twist, 2005, Roman Polanski's version starring Ben Kingsley The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2008, Harwood's adaptation has already won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director and has also been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and Best Screenplay BAFTA Love In The Time Of Cholera, 2008, from Gabriel Gárcia Márquez's bestselling novel