This year’s Tinniswood Award has been awarded to the late Oliver Emanuel for his “deeply poetic … extraordinary, generous gift of a play” One Hundred and Fifty Days. The work is a meditation on life and love and was edited and abridged by Oliver’s collaborator and producer, Kirsty Williams, and his life partner, Victoria Beesley, following his death from cancer in 2023.
The Tinniswood Award was announced at the BBC Audio Drama Awards in London on Sunday 1 March 2026, at a ceremony hosted by Miles Jupp.
James Fritz was awarded a ‘highly commended’ for his “searingly insightful” play Life and Times: Fourteen Years. The other shortlisted plays were Mrs Bibi by Waleed Akhtar and Star by Sarah Wooley. You can read more about all the shortlisted plays here.
The £3,000 prize was awarded by judges Nell Leyshon, Linda Marshall-Griffiths and Christopher William Hill and presented at the ceremony by Nell Leyshon.
About One Hundred and Fifty Days
Oliver Emanuel was part way through writing an audio drama when he found he could no longer read. He had brain cancer.
He paused writing his play about a man and a woman caught in a rip tide, imagining the life they might have had together. And began a creative response to his illness. He wanted it broadcast. He also wanted his unfinished play broadcast.
In order to fulfil his wishes, Kirsty Williams (his collaborator and producer) and Victoria Beesley (his life partner) abridged his writing on brain cancer and wove it through the unfinished play. The two pieces started to talk to one another as if Oliver’s characters were sitting in his imagination – at times supporting him, sometimes distracting him.
One Hundred and Fifty Days is a unique view into the experience of cancer and of the slow disintegration of language that brain cancer can have. It is also a meditation on life and love.
The judges said: “This incredible play is a masterclass in writing sound. It’s radiophonic, evolving, and illuminates an absolute understanding of the form.
“It is deeply poetic, at one moment devastating and two seconds later comic. The transformative power of a radio play demonstrated in the writing is profound. Even in the breakage of language itself, the play becomes an articulation of the journey. The play falls continuously through two worlds – one sparse and imagined, one brutal, real and full of the joy of kids. The undertow is ever apparent, but still words surprise and land in the mind and stab the heart.
“This is a love story between a man and a woman. A love-letter to his wife, his children, to life itself and an extraordinary and generous gift of a play to us by one of the greatest ever audio writers.”
One Hundred and Fifty Days was directed by Kirsty Williams, BBC Audio Scotland, for BBC Radio 4. Listen here
About Oliver Emanuel
Oliver Emanuel was a playwright for radio and stage based in Scotland. He wrote over 25 dramas for radio, winning a host of prestigious awards, including a Tinniswood Award for When the Pips Stop. A WGGB member, in 2021 he was shortlisted for a Writers’ Guild Award for the Tenderness of Boys. Read an obituary written by fellow playwright, audio dramatist and WGGB member Dan Rebellato.
About the Tinniswood Award
The Tinniswood Award was established by WGGB and the Society of Authors to perpetuate the memory of Peter Tinniswood as well as to celebrate and encourage high standards in radio drama.
Previous winners include Edson Burton, Shôn Dale-Jones, Anita Sullivan, Sonya Hale, Christopher Douglas, Ian Martin, Sarah Woods, Oliver Emanuel, Morwenna Banks, Mike Bartlett, and Colin Teevan.
We are very grateful to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society for its generous sponsorship, including the £3,000 prize. The 2026 award is for a drama broadcast or made available online in the UK between 1 October 2024 and 31 October 2025.
Photo of Oliver Emanuel by Steve Beesley, photo of Peter Tinniswood by Jeremy Young