Jeremy Irons is to make his National Theatre debut in a new play on the life of prime minister Harold Macmillan.

Never So Good has been written by Howard Brenton, the playwright who provoked uproar with his 1980 play The Romans In Britain and offended Christians with his last work at the National on the life of St Paul.

His latest work, to be premiered in March, examines how the Eton-educated Conservative politician was tormented by his experience of the First World War and an unhappy marriage.

It covers his political life with Winston Churchill, his brush with death in the Second World War and, when he eventually became premier, how he was brought down by the Profumo scandal.

The title is taken from Macmillan's famous proclamation during the 1959 general election: "Indeed, let us be frank about it - most of our people have never had it so good."

The economic security it trumpeted helped his party to victory.

The prospect of a study of the Tory statesman by Brenton, a Left-wing iconoclast, may alarm traditional Conservatives.

It comes two years after the 55-year-old's provocative play Paul caused howls of protests from Christians. Some warned Nicholas Hytner, the National's artistic director, that he would burn in hell.

The play suggested that Christianity was based on a con because Jesus survived crucifixion.

It was the latest in a long line of contentious works by Brenton, including The Romans In Britain, which involved a scene of attempted buggery, and Pravda, in which he and co-author David Hare launched a thinly veiled attack on media baron Rupert Murdoch.

Previous political work includes The Churchill Play, which offered a dystopian vision of a future fascist Britain. Never So Good will be directed by Howard Davies, who also directed Paul.

Irons, 59, was last seen in the West End last year in a book adaptation, Embers, with Patrick Malahide.

The new play is in the programme of work for 2008 being announced by Hytner at the National today.

Vanessa Redgrave will appear in April in Joan Didion's stage adaptation of her best-selling memoir, The Year Of Magical Thinking. It chronicled Didion's life with her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne, and her grieving process when he died at about the same time as her daughter lapsed into a coma.

Redgrave has already performed the work on Broadway, where she was nominated for a best actress Tony.

Ralph Fiennes will play the title role in a new version of Sophocles's Oedipus by Frank McGuinness directed by Jonathan Kent in October.