The Society for Theatre Research prize for the best book about British Theatre, awarded for a book published in the previous year, this time goes to actor Ian Kelly.
Kelly was seen last year in the West End and on Broadway in The Pitman Painters. He is currently filming Closed with Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall but he still managed to be at the London Palladium on Thursday morning to hear it announced that his book Mr Foote’s Other Leg had won.
In front of a gathering of theatre and publishing people and a scattering of academics, the winner was announced by actor Timothy West, the President of the Society for Theatre Research, after the judges told the audience about this year’s entries.
Introduced by their Chairman, BTG’s own reviewer Howard Loxton, representing the Society for Theatre Research, the judging panel was actress Penelope Keith, Professor Gavin Henderson, Principal of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Henry Hitchings, theatre critic of the Evening Standard.
Ian Kelly, already the author of books on Casanova and Beau Brummell, really hits the jackpot with this biography of the actor manager who ran the Haymarket Theatre and invented the one-man show—and that after losing one leg in a riding accident.
Mr Foote’s Other Leg, published by Picador, is a very lively story that throws a great deal of light on life in the theatre in the eighteenth century and his time. When the judges talked about the books at the presentation, Professor Gavin Henderson described it as a “finely judged narrative” and “thoroughly entertaining” for Foote, a rival of fellow student Garrick, “sees the funny side of everything—including the amputation of his leg.”
There seemed nothing affected about Kelly’s display of surprise: "I am an actor and I’m speechless. I'm useless without a script. I didn’t prepare anything because I assumed this would not be happening.” Clearly he had already guessed at which of the finalists was the winner and it wasn’t him.
Kelly’s book was up against very formidable competition. A lot of people had their money on Independent on Sunday critic Kate Bassett’s biography of Jonathan Miller In Two Minds from Orion Books. It is a massively-researched volume that would also have been a very worthy winner.
Theatre critic Henry Hitchings, remarked “the subject of this book was pretty familiar to me, but I learned a huge amount about this complex man and his intellect. Bassett shrewdly makes the point that being a doctor and being a director are not so very different.
"It was Jonathan Miller who once described a noted theatre critic as coming down on his work ‘like an ounce of bricks’. Here there’s no need for feeble censure or faint praise. I’m not 'in two minds': this is a fine and necessary book. In the crude yet expedient shorthand of the trade: five stars."
Also on the shortlist was John Major’s book on Music Hall My Old Man. from Harper Press. Fellow judge actress Penelope Keith thought it gave “a fascinating insight into the hardship, low wages, unscrupulous theatre managers and sheer resilience of the entertainers.”
Margaret Leask’s Lena Ashwell was another shortlisted title, a study of a now little-known early twentieth century actress and manager who, as Penelope Keith remarked, ‘was crucial both for the advancement of women in the English theatre and for the formation of the National Theatre. A lady largely neglected in theatre history, to use common parlance, “airbrushed out”’.
Jointly published by Hertford University Press and the STR, this is the first time one of the Society’s own publications has been shortlisted for the prize. The other shortlisted title, the Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, was described by Hitchings as “the sort of single-volume map of current scholarship that you can imagine actually defining future research in its field.”
A good crop—and there were another fifty or so titles entered, several of which probably very nearly made it to the shortlist.
If you want to take a look at the range of books entered, they are all of them listed on the STR web site with links to their publishers.