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. Recent titles are In Search of Gielgud: A Biographer’s Tale, based on my diary of the time; and Closely Observed Theatre: From the National to the Old Vic, a second collection of my theatre journalism.

My most recent book is Performing Hamlet: Actors in the Modern Age, based on my interviews with a wide range of star actors and directors, who talk in detail about the formidable challenges presented by Shakespeare’s great tragedy. Published in 2018 by Bloomsbury in the Arden Shakespeare series, it’s a follow-up to Performing King Lear: Gielgud to Russell Beale, published in 2015.

I am now writing a one-woman show, A Star of Life, based on my biography of Sybil Thorndike.

You can contact me at jcroall2019@gmail.com