If David Edgar saw his public persona as a (Balzacian) secretary for his times in 1996, he is in an even stronger position to perform that role now, as he moves into the fifth decade of his prolific career. There are secretaries and there are Secretaries: Mikhail Gorbachev was a Secretary. And there are Secretaries-General – roles with a good deal more room for leadership and ability to shape affairs than those who merely record. We have shown that Edgar is a Secretary at least as much as a secretary, and that, with some of his fellow playwrights who also ‘attend to arrangements’, he is engaged in defining the cultural character of the new millennium.