FOR Daniel Betts, playing lawyer Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is "an absolute honour and an absolute peach of a role".

When asked if this had always been a part he wanted to play, Daniel said he curled up into a tiny ball at such a question, "but it is the sort of question you should be asking yourself as an actor".

"I don't know why it should be an awkward question, but I suppose it boils down to ego saying what things I could do, as I don't like to have that kind of ego at work," he says. "What you do is find your own way of doing the story."

Last seen on a Yorkshire stage as Camillo in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale in York and Hull in Spring 2013, Daniel will be starring in the Regent's Park Theatre production of Mockingbird at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from tomorrow.

Rather than fulfilling a wish to play Atticus, Daniel is "more interested in the business of making a piece of work", that piece being a tale of courage and compassion as lawyer Atticus Finch seeks the truth and his feisty daughter Scout brings new hope to a small-town Alabama neighbourhood, sent into turmoil when enveloped in Deep Southern racial injustice.

"We want to make the audience believe that they're in 1930s' Alabama, while being asked to think about themselves and the country they're living in now," says Daniel.

"What's really interesting about Atticus and Harper Lee's story is the championing of the tolerant. liberal mind, which has really gone from our country."

Where the liberal mind used to be seen as the position of strength, now it is perceived as wishy-washy. "There is such extremism; it has to be either UKIP or the Socialist Worker. Where has the moderate gone? The man who says let's try and understand other human beings.

"So it's tragic when you think Lee's story is a record of something that happened more than 70 years ago. Where has Atticus's type gone? He was a standard bearer, trying to make people think differently in a world of bigotry and racism and prejudice, but I don't know who could take up the standard now. There's been a failure in re-educating people's attitudes for two whole generations, but it's still about educating people, isn't it?"

Timothy Sheader's touring production comes at a time when Harper Lee is hot news again, as the world awaits the July publication of her novel Go Set A Watchman, the story of a now-adult Scout set 20 years after Mockingbird.

"As I understand it, this was the original book she brought to the publishers, but it was told in flashback, so they said 'build up the flashbacks'," says Daniel. "It will be very interesting to see what emerges."

To Kill A Mockingbird, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tomorrow to April 4, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm, March 25, 26, 31 and April 1; 2pm, March 28 and April 4. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk. Suitable for age 13 upwards.