Gordon McMullan, professor of English at King’s College London and an IAM contributor, has won the 2016 Sam Wanamaker Award – Shakespeare’s Globe’s most prestigious prize.
McMullan is the brainchild behind the Shakespeare400 series, which drew together events from all over the UK celebrating the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (read the full interview with IAM here). He was also a co-curator of By me William Shakespeare: a life in writing, which was this year’s major exhibition at the National Archives in London, and co-editor of the book that accompanied it.
The academic is giving this year’s Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. His speech will address both what it means to remember Shakespeare and what it means to forget not only Shakespeare’s work but also that of his less well-remembered contemporaries.
Said McMullan: ‘I am enormously pleased – and a bit amazed, given those who have previously received this award – to receive the Sam Wanamaker award in this year of years, 2016.
‘I would like to dedicate it both to my lovely colleagues at King’s and in Globe Education and to a predecessor of mine at King’s, professor Sir Israel Gollancz, the leading light in the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations of 1916 and the inspiration for Shakespeare400.’
McMullan will pick up his prize in a ceremony on 11 June. You can read his recent article for IAM in the May edition of the magazine.
