Sheridan Morley
Drama critic, journalist and biographer, he was steeped in British theatrical tradition
In looks, he took after his outsized father, and when he grew a full Victorian beard he looked even larger. Indeed, his size and a certain awkwardness could put people off him: a fellow reviewer grumbled about Morley bumping into him in the theatre. And while he was the theatre reviewer and arts editor of the old Punch from 1975 to 1989, guests at the weekly Punch lunch complained when they were seated next to him: when he turned to talk to the person on his other side, they were cut off from the rest of the table by the intimidating wall of the Morley back. He did not mean to be rude, unlike his father, also a Punch table member, who would make a display of removing his hearing aid when the conversation got boring, which it often did.
Morley said his time at Punch was the happiest of his life. Certainly, benevolent editors allowed him to write books in the office. He managed to produce an impressive list of biographies while he was there. These included Oscar Wilde (1976); Sybil Thorndike (1977); Marlene Dietrich (1977); Gladys Cooper (1979); Noel Coward (1979); Gertrude Lawrence (1981); Tales from the Hollywood Raj (1983); Katharine Hepburn (1984); Ingrid Bergman (1985); James Mason (1989); and Elizabeth Taylor (1988).
At Punch, he was a colourful character who added something to the life of the office, not all of it pleasant. He walked about in stockinged feet and had an exceedingly loud voice, especially on the telephone. Once he was speaking to someone in New York and one of the women in the Punch library, which was across the corridor from his room, said: "Next time I think he should use the telephone."
Born in Ascot, Berkshire, he was named after Sheridan Whiteside, the self-centred and demanding chief character in The Man Who Came to Dinner, who Robert was playing in the West End when Sheridan was born. It was an eccentric choice of name, but Robert displayed even more eccentricity when choosing a school for his son. He placed an advertisement in the personal column of the Times. "Father with horrible memories of his own schooldays at Wellington is searching for a school for his son where the food matters as much as the education, and the standards are those of a good three-star seaside hotel."
This way he found a liberal school run by Harry Tuyn, a Quaker Dutchman, in a country house near Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. This was Sizewell Hall, only a mile or two away from AS Neill's radical Summerhill in Leiston. When Sizewell Hall closed in the later 1950s, Tuyn started an English girls' finishing school in Château d'Oex, near Gstaad, in Switzerland, and Morley failed to complete his education. He had only O-level French, but by taking private lessons he was able to enter Merton College, Oxford, where he studied French and graduated in 1964.
He took something of a wrong turning with his first job after leaving Oxford, as an ITN reporter and scriptwriter, but in 1967 he joined BBC2's new arts magazine programme Late Night Line-Up, where he could demonstrate his interest in the theatre. He later presented Film Night on BBC2 before becoming deputy features editor of the Times (1973-75).
Although he had no real desire to become an actor, he did appear on stage. He was the narrator in Side by Side by Sondheim at Guildford and Norwich in 1983. He also devised a show called Noel and Gertie, a Coward and Gertrude Lawrence anthology in 1982 and Spread a Little Happiness, an anthology of Vivian Ellis in 1991. He turned his hand to directing, too, with Song at Twilight at the Gielgud in 1999; Where Are the Songs We Sang at the King's Head, Islington (2002), and four cabaret seasons at Pizza on the Park in London in the nineties. Morley also edited a number of theatre annuals and film and theatre studies, Punch at the Theatre; The Methuen Book of Theatrical Short Stories (1992); and The Methuen Book of Movie Stories (1993). All this work was fitted around his real job as a drama critic and broadcaster, and it is perhaps even more remarkable that some of it was done while he suffered a serious nervous breakdown and bout of depression when his first marriage broke down in 1987.
When he came out of this and left Punch for the Spectator, he resumed his output with biographies of Audrey Hepburn (1993); Gene Kelly (1996); Marilyn Monroe (1998); Judy Garland (1998), and the official biography of John Gielgud (2001). He also managed an autobiography, Asking for Trouble (2002). For many years he presented the Radio 2 Arts programme on Friday nights.
When he was sacked by the Spectator in 2002 and his job was given to Toby Young, Morley went to the New Statesman, where he was quite quickly replaced as drama critic by Michael Portillo. "I might as well have been replaced by Sooty and Sweep," Sheridan said. In 2004 he went to the Express, replacing Robert Gore-Langton, who called Morley a tottering safety hazard. "I'd say he's a hard man to ignore but well worth the effort," Mr Gore-Langton said. This was unusual because Sheridan, although accused of being slapdash and sometimes wildly inaccurate, was generally well liked.
He leaves his first wife, the American novelist Margaret Gudejko, whom he married in 1965, his second wife, the journalist Ruth Leon, and one son and two daughters by his first wife
Michael Billington writes: I first met Sheridan when he was a Merton undergraduate in 1961. And, although he was a couple of years younger than me, I was slightly in awe of his energy, charm and air of theatrical glamour. Over the years we became good friends, attended the same first nights and even alternated the Friday-night slot on Radio Four's Kaleidoscope for a decade. But, amid all Sheridan's public achievements, there are two private qualities I would single out.
One was his immense generosity. One day in 1965, when after brief forays into journalism and theatre, I was jobless and without any prospect of employment, Sheridan and his sister came to tea in my Bayswater flat. After I'd poured out my troubles, Sheridan immediately suggested I write to the then arts editor of the Times, John Lawrence. I did as he suggested and the result changed my life. John Peter, who went on to a long career on the Sunday Times, tells an exactly similar story of his youthful debt to Sheridan.
In later years, I was struck by Sheridan's heroic courage in overcoming a debilitating stroke. He continued to host Radio Two's excellent arts show, Green Room, do overnight reviews for the Daily Express and write a first-rate Gielgud biography and fascinating volume of memoirs. He was proof of Blake's dictum that "energy is eternal delight". Even in his difficult later years, there was a drive and determination about Sheridan that made him a life-enhancing figure and that never imperilled the bonds of true friendship. Like everyone in journalism and theatre, I shall miss him enormously.
· Sheridan Robert Morley, drama critic, biographer and broadcaster, born December 5 1941; died February 16 2007
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