It is with much sadness that we have to report the recent death of Professor Simon Trussler, Emeritus Professor of the College and a former Senior Research Fellow here. Simon retired from Rose Bruford College in 2011. His contribution to theatre scholarship was significant and he continued until very recently to exert a considerable influence given his curation of an immense body of knowledge evidenced by his co-editorship (first with Clive Barker and latterly with Maria Shevtsova) of New Theatre Quarterly since its inception.
Simon was in touch with new playwriting and current theatre scholarship through his ownership of Country Setting which worked with Faber & Faber and Bloomsbury in the publication of plays and other material connected to drama and theatre studies.
Simon was author or editor of numerous books on drama and theatre, including The Faber Pocket Guide to Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, Shakespearean Concepts (1989), the award-winning Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (1993) and Will's Will (2007). He was editor of the RSC Yearbook from 1978 to 1985, and edited and introduced 14 volumes in the 'Swan Theatre Plays' series (Methuen, 1986-89).
Born in Tenterden in Kent in June 1942, Simon also produced a memoir, The Hops and the Hopes: A Childhood in Post-War Kent in which he recalled growing up in the Kentish Weald.
In addition to his connection with Rose Bruford College, Simon was formerly Reader in Drama at Goldsmiths, University of London.
(Professor Nesta Jones will be writing a fuller piece regarding Professor Trussler in due course.)