Profile

Before becoming a full-time writer I worked for many years in publishing, as an editor with Penguin, Oxford University Press, and Writers and Readers. As a journalist I have written for the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Listener, Spectator and Vole magazine. I have also been features editor of the Times Educational Supplement, co-founder and editor of Arts Express magazine, editor of the National Theatre’s magazine StageWrite, programme editor at the Old Vic theatre, and contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography.

My books cover theatre, film, history, education, and the environment, and include biographies of John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndike, AS Neill, and my father, the actor John Stuart.  My most recent books, published in the summer of 2023, are All is Fortune and Other Theatre Stories (see Fiction), and From Silent Film Idol to Superman: The Life and Career of John Stuart (see Biography). I am currently writing a play for the Finborough theatre in London about my father’s years as a star of British silent films.

Meanwhile I am waiting for the next slot to submit to Irish Radio my play about the stormy relationship between Bernard Shaw and the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell. I have also written a play for the theatre, as yet unstaged, about Scott Fitzgerald’s years as an unsuccessful screenplay writer in Hollywood.

You can contact me at jcroall2019@gmail.com