Tennessee Williams book wins theatre biography prize

John Lahr has won the eighth annual Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography for Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh.

The book, described at today's prizegiving by panel member Michael Simkins as the "definitive biography" of Tennessee Williams, was published in 2014, and has also won awards including a 2014 National Book Critics' Circle Award for best biography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award.

Lahr, author of over 20 books and The New Yorker's senior drama critic for 21 years, gave a baseball analogy at the Garrick Club today: "I'm 73 and every time you step up to the plate at that age you feel it's the last of the ninth, and all you want is a good look at the ball and a clean swing, and you hope that you connect. This award makes me feel that I have, thank you."

Awarded annually to the best biography, autobiography or diary in theatre or show business published in the preceding calendar year, the aim of the Sheridan Morley Prize is to advance the cause of biographical writing. It is held in honour of the late author, and the winner gets a £2000 prize donated by members of the Garrick Club.

Of more than 30 books submitted to this year's panel, which included Sheridan Morley's widow Ruth Leon, critic Kate Bassett and actors Gemma Jones and Michael Simkins, the four others shortlisted were 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.