The shortlist is announced today for the eighth annual Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography.
The nominees are Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr, Our Time of Day: My Life with Corin Redgrave by Kika Markham, What do I Know?: People, Politics and the Arts by Richard Eyre, Covering Shakespeare by David Weston and I Know Nothing: The Autobiography by Andrew Sachs.
The annual Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography will be awarded in a ceremony on 19 March 2015 at The Garrick Club. Now in its eighth year, the prize is awarded for the best biography, autobiography or diary in theatre or show business published in the preceding calendar year.
Established in 2008, the Prize is to honour Sheridan Morley's career as an author who specialised in biographies of actors, directors, and theatre and film personalities, including his own acclaimed memoir, Asking for Trouble. In his lifetime, he wrote 37 books, the majority of which were biographies, amongst them, the authorised lives of Sir John Gielgud, Sir Noël Coward, and David Niven.
The Prize is judged by a distinguished jury of theatrical and literary practitioners and previous shortlisted authors. Led by Ruth Leon, the panel for this year's prize are Kate Bassett, journalist and theatre critic for The Times—her work In Two Minds: A Biography of Jonathan Miller was shortlisted for 2013's Sheridan Morley Prize—stage and screen actress Gemma Jones and actor and writer Michael Simkins—his work The Rules Of Acting was shortlisted for 2014's Sheridan Morley Prize.