The winner of the Papatango New Writing Prize 2014 was announced today (30 June), with the award going to Fiona Doyle's lyrical, compassionate and urgent drama Coolatully.

Kilian was once Coolatully's pride and joy, its champion on the hurling field. Now the village can't muster a team, the country's shutting down, and Eilish wants to leave for a new life across the ocean. And this is 2014. As Irish history repeats itself, Kilian must confront the demons of the past and decide whether to stay or go forever.

Coolatully will premiere at the Finborough Theatre, London, in October 2014, and the script will be published by Nick Hern Books. It's available to pre-order now.

Founded in 2009, the Papatango New Writing Prize is a yearly award Previous winners include Foxfinder by Dawn King, Pack by Louise Monaghan and Unscorched by Luke Owen. For more information about the Prize, visit the Papatango website.

Michael Palin's new book, Monty Python at Work, is out now - and we have a limited number of copies signed by Michael Palin available to purchase through the NHB site.

Drawn from his published diaries, the book is Michael Palin’s account of the making of the Monty Python TV and stage shows, films, books and albums. Spanning from the first day of filming on Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969 to the opening of their final film The Meaning of Life in 1983, it is an intimate behind-the-scenes guide that will delight Python fans everywhere, and be a source of instruction and inspiration to those who seek to follow in their footsteps.

To order your signed copy, click here. Stock is strictly limited, so be sure to get your copy before they're gone!

Nick Hern Books is saddened to learn of the death of playwright Kevin Elyot, who died this weekend following a long illness.

An acclaimed writer for both stage and screen, Kevin's works include My Night With Reg (Royal Court, winner of the 1994 Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Comedy), The Day I Stood Still (National Theatre), Mouth to Mouth (Royal Court and Albery Theatre), and, for TV, Clapham Junction (Darlow Smithson/Channel 4), Christopher and His Kind (Mammoth Screen/BBC), and numerous episodes of Marple (ITV Productions). 

Nick Hern, who published Kevin's play My Night With Reg alongside its 1994 premiere, said:

'I’ll always be grateful to Kevin Elyot for two principle reasons. One, as the author of some of the wittiest, most poignantly acerbic plays of the 1990s; and two as the inadvertent saviour of Nick Hern Books, which had not long struggled into independent life when My Night With Reg transferred from the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs to the Criterion in the West End where it ran for seven glorious months before transferring again to the Playhouse. Thanks to the Royal Court, Nick Hern Books was supplying the Criterion with programme/texts, and I remember delivering over 5000 copies a month to the stage door throughout the run, thus generating badly needed income for the fledgling NHB.

'Kevin in person could be as wittily acerbic as his writing. When I read him the draft blurb for a volume of his collected plays which ended, ‘Kevin lives in London near Hampstead Heath’, with a twinkle in his eye he suggested adding,  ‘But doesn’t go there much anymore.’'

My Night With Reg is revived at the Donmar Warehouse from 31 July.

HBO's television adaptation of Larry Kramer's powerful AIDS play The Normal Heart will have its UK premiere on Sky Atlantic this Sunday, 1 June, at 9pm - and the script is available to buy through our website now.

Larry Kramer's passionate, polemical drama, first seen at the Public Theater in New York in 1985, is set during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. It follows the efforts of one man, while his friends are dying around him, to break through a conspiracy of silence, indifference and hostility from public officials and the gay community, and gain recognition for a disease that threatens to change everything.

The Normal Heart transferred to the Royal Court Theatre in 1986, and won the Tony Award for Best Revival when it was staged on Broadway in 2011.

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch and Jim Parsons, the HBO adaptation premiered on HBO in the US last weekend (25 May). It has been nominated for five prizes at the Critics' Choice Television Awards: Best Movie, Best Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series (Mark Ruffalo), Best Supporting Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series (Matt Bomer, Joe Mantello) and Best Supporting Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series (Julia Roberts).

The playscript to The Normal Heart is availabe to purchase through our website at a 20% discount - click here to get your copy. The play is also available as an ebook.

Nick Hern Books is to publish Monty Python at Work, a new book by Michael Palin that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the hugely influential comedy group, on 12 June 2014.

Drawn from his published diaries, the book is Michael Palin’s account of the making of the Monty Python TV and stage shows, films, books and albums, spanning the period from the beginning of filming on Flying Circus, in 1969, to the opening of The Meaning of Life in 1983.

Thanks to Palin’s as-it-happened accounts, we are taken behind the scenes to watch with unrivalled intimacy the creative processes that led to the finished work, seeing how it was actually put together. An intimate guide to the group's exploits, it will delight Python fans everywhere, and be a source of instruction and inspiration to students and those who seek to follow in the group's footsteps.

The book will be launched with a talk and signing at the National Theatre, London, on Monday 2 June 2014 - for more information, and to book tickets, see here.

The winners of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award were announced today (6 May), with NHB author Conor McPherson's play The Night Alive named Best New Play.

An inimitably warm and stylish play that deftly mines the humanity to be found in the most unlikely of situations, The Night Alive tells the story of down-on-his-luck Tommy. Renting a run-down room in his uncle Maurice’s house and lurching from one get-rich-quick scheme to the next, he starts to hope for a brighter future when he comes to the aid of similarly troubled Aimee.

The play premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in June 2013 to critical praise, with WhatsOnStage describing it as 'superb, vivid and violent... a brilliantly fused improvisation on Harold Pinter and David Mamet'. It later transferred to the Atlantic Theater, New York, where it ran from November 2013 to February 2014.

The Night Alive was also recently nominated for Best New Play at this year's Olivier Awards.

SPECIAL OFFER

We're offering a special discount on The Night Alive to celebrate its New York success. Get 50% off when you order the book through our website - just use the code ALIVE at checkout. This offer is valid until 1 June 2014.

West End Producer, the theatre impresario and Twitter sensation, has shared all he's learnt about how to get ahead in showbusiness, in the form of a handy book: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting (But Were Afraid To Ask, Dear).

Packed with wit and marvellous indiscretion, full of gossip and insider knowledge, and with enough savvy advice to kickstart a career, it’s a practical – and sometimes deliciously impractical! – guide to everything you need to know about showbusiness.

We've now got fresh stock of the limited edition, exclusive Actors' Alphabet poster, only available through the NHB website. Finally discover if you're a Bactor, Mactor, or even (Heaven forbid!) a dreaded Zactor - it's a great accompaniment to what is undoubtedly The Theatre Book Of The Millenium, dear. 

You can have a poster absolutely free when you order a copy of Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting through this website - you can't find them anywhere else! A poster will be included with every copy of the book ordered through our website, available as long as stocks last.

To order your copy and claim your poster, click here.

To get a taste of the book, and read WEP's explanation of how casting actually works, visit his entry on the NHB blog.

Bard of Avon, national poet, scourge of schoolchildren - 23 April 2014 marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the most celebrated, studied and influential writer of all time: William Shakespeare.

To mark the happy occasion, we're offering 50% off the Shakespeare books:

• Performing Shakespeare by Oliver Ford Davies
• The Quality of Mercy by Peter Brook
• Shakespeare's Lost Play by Gregory Doran
• Shakespeare on Stage by Julian Curry
• Shakespeare on Theatre, compiled by Nick de Somogyi
• Speaking the Speech by Giles Block
• Sweet William by Michael Pennington
• Year of the King by Antony Sher

Written by some of today's leading actors, directors and scholars, they are worthy guides to this genius' work.

To take advantage of the offer, just enter the code SHAKESPEARE450 at checkout. The offer is valid until Sunday 4 May. For more information, visit the dedicated page.

The winners of the 38th Olivier Awards were announced yesterday (13 April), with Nick Hern Books plays and authors landing no fewer than twelve prizes across a wide range of categories, including the trio of Best New Play, Best New Comedy and Best Revival.

Lucy Kirkwood's gripping thriller Chimerica was the most successful production on the night, winning a total of five awards: Best New Play, Best Director, Best Set Design, Best Lighting Design and Best Sound Design (both shared).

A gripping political examination and engaging personal drama about an American photojournalist searching for the subject of his most famous photograph - the mysterious Tiananmen Square Tank Man - Chimerica enjoyed a hit West End transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre last summer, following its initial sell-out run at the Almeida Theatre. It has also won the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Play, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Last year, Lucy was also named as the UK recipient of the inaugural Berwin Lee Playwrights Award, a major new prize designed to build links between the UK and US new writing scenes.

NHB author Richard Eyre's production of Ghosts landed three prizes: Best Revival, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.

An intense, fast-paced version of Ibsen's classic tragedy both adapted and directed by Eyre, Ghosts opened at the Almeida Theatre in September 2013 to critical acclaim - with Time Out's Andrzej Lukowski declaring it 'the most lucid and affecting version of the play I have ever seen' - before transferring to Trafalgar Studios in December. A Broadway production is apparently in the works.

On the musicals front, Once, with music & lyrics by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová and a book by NHB author Enda Walsh, bagged two prizes: Best Actress in a Musical and Outstanding Achievement in Music.

A charming and irresistible musical based on the Academy Award-winning film, Once tells the story of an Irish busker and a young Czech woman who meet on the streets of Dublin, and strike up an intense, blossoming friendship grounded in a shared love of songwriting. Originally seen on Broadway - where it won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Book - Once opened at the Phoenix Theatre, West End, in 2013.

Best New Comedy was won by  Jeeves & Wooster in 'Perfect Nonsense', the Goodale Brothers' play based on the works of P. G. Wodehouse.

An inventive, fast-paced comedy featuring Wodehouse’s iconic double act, the play opened at the Duke of York's Theatre, London following preview performances in Richmond and Brighton. It has recently extended booking until September.

Finally, NHB author Rory Kinnear scooped the Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance as Iago in the National Theatre's production of Othello. Kinnear was similarly recognised at both the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Theatre Awards.

We'd like to extend our sincere congratulations to the winners - the scripts to all four are avaiable to buy via this website.

Highlights of the Olivier Awards ceremony, which took place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, are available to watch on the ITV website until 12 May.

We're delighted to announce that Giles Block's Speaking the Speech, the most authoritative, most comprehensive book yet written on speaking Shakespeare’s words, has been shortlisted for the 2014 Theatre Book Prize.

In Speaking the Speech, Giles Block - ‘Master of the Words’ at Shakespeare’s Globe – sets out to answer two simple questions: why does Shakespeare write in the way he does? And how can actors and directors get the most out of his incomparable plays?

Addressing a wide range of topics that any actor approaching Shakespeare's works needs to understand, it is also essential for directors, and of great interest to anyone who wants to deepen their appreciation of Shakespeare’s language and the way it comes to life when spoken aloud. The book also features a Foreword from renowned actor Mark Rylance.

The Theatre Book Prize is an annual award presented by the Society of Theatre Research. All new works of original research first published in English on British or British-related theatre are eligible, except for play texts and studies of drama as literature. The winner is chosen by an independent panel of judges which changes every year.

Also shortlisted are: The National Theatre Story, Daniel Rosenthal (Oberon Books); The Other National Theatre: 350 Years of Shows in Drury Lane, Robert Whelan (Jacob Tonson); Stage Blood, Michael Blakemore (Faber & Faber); Wooden Os: Shakspeare's Theatres and England's Trees, Vin Nardizzi (University of Toronto Press).

The winner of the 2014 Prize will be announced on 9 May at a ceremony at the London Palladium.

SPECIAL OFFER

We're offering a special discount on Speaking the Speech to celebrate its Theatre Book Prize nomination. Get 25% off when you order the book through our website - just use the code SPEECH at checkout. This offer is valid until 8 May 2014.