Whitbread Book Awards
The
Whitbread Book Awards are among the
United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards. The awards are named after and funded by
Whitbread plc, a leading British leisure company.
The awards, launched in
1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such they are a more populist literary prize than the
Booker Prize. One of the main events in the British literary calendar, they are sometimes announced as if they are the first of the year's literary prizes, whereas they are actually the last.
In 1989, controversy erupted when the judges first awarded the Best Novel prize to
Alexander Stuart's
The War Zone, then withdrew the prize prior to the ceremony amid acrimony among the judges, ultimately awarding it to
Lindsay Clarke's
The Chymical Wedding.
The
2005 awards were the last sponsored by Whitbread. In 2006,
Costa Coffee took over as sponsors for the awards, changing the name to the
Costa Book Awards.
Currently each year winners are chosen by five separate judging panels picking from different shortlists in five different categories
The categories are:
*Best novel
*Best first novel
*Children's
*Poetry
*Biography
Each category winner receives £5000. One of the category winners is selected as the "Book of the Year" and given a further £25 000. The overall Whitbread book of the year is chosen by a judging panel that comprises five judges from the previous category round and four new ones.
The category winners do not have to be British but must be resident in the UK for at least six months of the year.
*
2005 -
Hilary Spurling,
Matisse The Master*
2004 -
Andrea Levy,
Small Island*
2003 -
Mark Haddon,
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time*
2002 -
Claire Tomalin,
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self*
2001 -
Philip Pullman,
The Amber Spyglass*
2000 -
Matthew Kneale,
English Passengers*
1999 -
Seamus Heaney,
Beowulf*
1998 -
Ted Hughes,
Birthday Letters*
1997 -
Ted Hughes,
Tales from Ovid*
1996 -
Seamus Heaney,
The Spirit Level*
1995 -
Kate Atkinson,
Behind the Scenes at the Museum*
1994 -
William Trevor,
Felicia’s Journey*
1993 -
Joan Brady,
Theory of War*
1992 -
Jeff Torrington,
Swing Hammer Swing!*
1991 -
John Richardson,
A Life of Picasso*
1990 -
Nicholas Mosley,
Hopeful Monsters*
1989 -
Richard Holmes,
Coleridge: Early Visions*
1988 -
Paul Sayer,
The Comforts of Madness*
1987 -
Christopher Nolan,
Under the eye of the clock*
1986 -
Kazuo Ishiguro,
An Artist of the Floating World*
1985 -
Douglas Dunn,
Elegies*
1984 -
James Buchan,
A Parish of Rich Women*
1983 -
John Fuller,
Flying to Nowhere*
1982 -
Bruce Chatwin,
On The Black Hill*
1981 -
William Boyd,
A Good Man in Africa*
1980 -
David Lodge,
How Far Can You Go?*
Whitbread Book Awards official web site
*
Most honored Whitbread Book Award shortlist books*
Injecting Caffeine Into the Whitbread (Now Costa) Book Awards at
The Book Standard
