JOSEPH Fiennes is to play the title role in Terence Rattigan’s Ross, directed by Adrian Noble, running at Chichester Festival Theatre next month.

Arrogant, flippant, withdrawn and with a talent for self-concealment, Aircraftman Ross seems an odd recruit for the Royal Air Force. Behind the false name is an enigma, a man who started as a civilian in the Map Office in 1914. Despite never receiving an official commission, he went on to mastermind some of the most audacious military victories in the history of the British Army, including the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Turks. These victories earned him an enduring and romantic nom de guerre: Lawrence of Arabia.

Terence Rattigan’s 1960 play is an epic and probing drama which reveals the deeply conflicted Englishman behind the heroic legend.

Fiennes is joined by Michael Feast, Paul Freeman and Peter Polycarpou, with Navinder Bhatti, Jorell Coiffic-Kamall, Ian Drysdale, Eben Figueiredo, Brendan Hooper, John Hopkins, Nicholas Prasad, Jay Saighal, Nick Sampson, Peter Sandys-Clarke, Gary Shelford, Benjamin Wainwright, Christopher Walters and Rick Yale.

Fiennes returns to Chichester to play T.E. Lawrence, following his appearance as Cyrano de Bergerac in 2009. His many films include Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Enemy at the Gates and Luther; his theatre work also includes Love’s Labour’s Lost (National Theatre), and Troilus and Cressida, The Herbal Bed and As You Like It (RSC).

Ross runs from June 3 to 25.

See cft.org.uk for tickets.