At a private reception at the Garrick Club on 2 March 2016 attended by a select group of theatre and book people the 2016 Sheridan Morley Prize was awarded to American academic James Shapiro for his book 1606 William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, chosen as the best book of biography, autobiography, memoir or diary of a theatrical, artistic, or show-business subject published in the English language in 2015.
The book looks at Shakespeare’s work and his world in the year in which he wrote King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth.
Judge John Lahr (New York theatre critic and and last year’s prize winner for his book on Tennessee Williams) described it as “lucious” and “daring,” commending it for being “written with great strategic narrative skill, a very, good clear English and is organised extremely well.”
American academic Shapiro, who is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was unable to be there in person but sent a message saying, "the Sheridan Morley award is especially meaningful to me because my Shakespeare is a man of the theatre and my book is as much about the theatre as it is about the writer himself. It is as much a celebration of one of the greatest seasons of plays as it is about the playwright who contributed so greatly to it."
In 1988 Professor Shapiro was Sam Wanamaker Fellow at the Globe Theatre and he sits on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company. This isn’t the first time Shapiro has carried off a British literary prize. In 2006, his earlier book 1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare won both the Theatre Book Prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize.
While the £2000 prize went to Shapiro, presentations were also made to the other short-listed titles. They were John Osborne: 'Anger is Not About...' by Peter Whitebrook, The Blue Touch Paper by David Hare, A Night in the Emperor's Garden by Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan's and Let Me Play the Lion Too: How to Be an Actor by Michael Pennington.
Lahr’s fellow judges were actor Kika Markham (short-listed last year for her memoir of her life with Corin Redgrave) and theatre critic Benedict Nightingale. They were chaired by Morley’s widow and his frequent co-author, critic and producer Ruth Leon, who founded the prize.
First presented for books published in 2007, previous winners have included Patrick Dromgoole, Michael Holroyd, Andrew McConnell Stott, Simon Callow, Stephen Sondheim, Rupert Everett and Michael Blakemore.