Sarah Vernon

When illness cut short actor Sarah Vernon’s career on the stage, she satisfied her passion for theatre by launching a website and becoming a prolific blogger.

As the daughter of actors Richard Vernon and Benedicta Leigh, Vernon was, she often claimed, “born in a trunk”, and happily followed her parents into the business.

After graduating from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 1978, she quickly found work in regional rep, including early professional appearances the same year in Walter Greenwood’s The Cure for Love and George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley, where she shared the stage with Sylvia Syms and Edward de Souza.

In 1983, she spent the summer season at the Leas Pavilion, Folkestone and was seen the following year in Jill Hyem’s Equal Terms and Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair at the New Inn, Ealing, where The Stage admired her “great panache.”

Later theatre included Steffen Silvis’ Arkie-Types at the Etcetera Theatre in 1991 and Donna Lucia in Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas at the Shaw Theatre in 1997. During the decade, she was also active as organiser of the Hammersmith Actors and Writers Group.

Her few television credits ranged from The Bill to John Mortimer’s Paradise Postponed (1986).

Diagnosed with limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis, a rare autoimmune disease, she retired from acting and launched the Rogues & Vagabonds website in 2001, publishing a broad range of theatre-related articles and reviews.

She later began two blogs: the theatre-and-arts-focused First Night Design and, delving eclectically into matters of the past, First Night History.

Sarah Benedicta Vernon was born on November 25, 1956. Diagnosed with a second condition, ulcerative colitis, in early 2018, she died on January 13, aged 64.