At the Garrick Club on 5 March, a select group literary and theatrical personalities gathered to hear the announcement of the winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize.
This annual prize is awarded for what a distinguished panel judges to be the best biography, autobiography or diary of a theatrical, artistic, or show-business subject published in the English language in the preceding calendar year.
It was set up in memory of writer and critic Sheridan Morley who, in a long and illustrious career, wrote more than 30 books, including major biographies of Noël Coward, John Gielgud, his father Robert Morley and his grandmother Gladys Cooper. It seeks to continue his legacy and to celebrate the art of theatrical biography.
The jury to judge this year’s prize consisted of director Stephen Unwin, former artistic director of the Rose Theatre Kingston, director Jenny Topper and literary agent Alan Brodie, chaired by Morley’s widow the critic, broadcaster and biographer Ruth Leon.
Knocking out the other short-listed titles, which were Michael Simkins’s The Rules of Acting (published by Ebury Press), the encapsuated wisdom of a "jobbing actor", and Philip Ziegler’s biography of Laurence Olivier, Olivier (from the MacLehose Press), the £2000 prize went to director Michael Blakemore for Stage Blood, published by Faber and Faber.
Stage Blood is Blakemore’s very personal account of his time as an associate director at the National Theatre from 1973 to 1976, which has been described as a “candid and at times painfully funny story”.
Our own Philip Fisher called it “a real page turner that shines a light on life at the National Theatre” that “turns positively Shakespearean as the directors wage war on each other leading to two very different versions of the truth following Blakemore's high-profile resignation. The reportage provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of the political machinations that can go on in boardrooms but also, it would seem, the genteel world of theatre.”
This is bound to be a very popular winner among theatre people.