November 2001
Shortlists announced for:
Whitbread First Novel Award
Whitbread Biography Award
Whitbread Poetry Award
Whitbread Novel Award
Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year
December 2001
Final Judging panel announced. The final judges select both the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Whitbread Book of the Year.
January 2002
Winners announced:
Whitbread First Novel Award
Whitbread Biography Award
Whitbread Poetry Award
Whitbread Novel Award
Tuesday 22 January 2002
Whitbread Book Awards Presentation Ceremony. Announcement of Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and Whitbread Book of the Year.
Note: The winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award is eligible for the Whitbread Book of the Year. It will be one of five books, each of which win £5,000, on the shortlist for the £25,000 Book of the Year, alongside the category Award winners for Novel, First Novel, Biography and Poetry.
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK OF THE YEAR - WINNER
January 23rd, 2001
MATTHEW KNEALE’S ENGLISH PASSENGERS WINS 2000 WHITBREAD BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
Second time lucky for Matthew after missing out on the Booker last November
Breaks four-year run of poetry winning main award and beats favourite White Teeth
Last novel to win: William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey in 1994
Matthew Kneale has become the first novelist to pick up the main Whitbread award since William Trevor with Felicia’s Journey in 1994. English Passengers- which narrowly missed out on last year’s Booker Prize - was praised by the Whitbread Novel judges as “one of the most enjoyable books we’ve ever read for pure, unadulterated, page-turning excitement”. The author, who has recently moved from Oxford to Italy, flew in to London especially to pick up his award.
The final judging panel included Sir Tim Rice as chairman, alongside Clare Balding, Sally Beauman, Alan Davies, Michael Holroyd, Michael Morpurgo, Matthew Pinsent, Jo Shapcott, Penny Smith and Minette Walters. Sir John Banham, Chairman of Whitbread PLC, presented Matthew with a cheque for £22,500 and a special commemorative award produced by Wedgwood in honour of the thirtieth anniversary of the awards, held at Whitbread’s historic banqueting centre in London.
English Passengers closely interweaves two tales, the first of a group of Englishmen in search of the true site of the Garden of Eden and the second the plight of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, fighting to survive against the colonial British. As the eponymous passengers near their destination however, their bizarre notions growing ever more painfully at odds with reality, it becomes clear that a mighty collision is approaching. The novel is narrated by a cacophony of voices which brings to vivid life a period of history often forgotten about.
Matthew Kneale was born in London in 1960 and brought up in Barnes. He read Modern History at Oxford, where he specialized in the nineteenth century. Having caught the travel bug as a student, he took a plane to Tokyo where he found work teaching English and, as a lone Englishman in a foreign land, decided to try his hand writing short stories. After returning to England in 1987, he completed his first novel Whore Banquets which was set in Japan and won a Somerset Maugham Award. He followed this with Inside Rose’s Kingdom in 1989 and Sweet Thames in 1992 which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Matthew has visited over 82 countries in 7 continents, including a trip to the highlands of Papua New Guinea that partly influenced his desire to write about the Tasmanian Aboriginals featured in English Passengers. Having taken a look at the Victorians “behaving abominably at home” in Sweet Thames he felt that “it was only right to see what wickedness they had got up to abroad, in particular in Tasmania”. He continues to travel whenever he can and is also a keen photographer. He now lives with his wife in the Roman countryside where he is currently at work on his next novel.
2000 WHITBREAD CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR - WINNER
January 23rd, 2001
JAMILA GAVIN’S CORAM BOY WINS 2000 WHITBREAD CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR
Novel set in 18th century England dealing with the slave trade and abandoned babies picks up main award
Jamila Gavin has won the 2000 Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award for Coram Boy, a historical novel set in 18th century England. The book beat off stiff competition from the three other novels on the shortlist: David Almond’s Heaven Eyes, Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Seeing Stone and Adele Geras’ Troy. J K Rowling won last year’s award for her third book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
The final judging panel included Sir Tim Rice as chairman, alongside Clare Balding, Sally Beauman, Alan Davies, Michael Holroyd, Michael Morpurgo, Matthew Pinsent, Jo Shapcott, Penny Smith and Minette Walters. Sir John Banham, Chairman of Whitbread PLC, presented Jamila with a cheque for £3,500 at the awards ceremony held at Whitbread’s historic banqueting centre in London.
Coram Boy is set in both Gloucester and London and tells the tale of Toby, saved from an African slave ship and Aaron, the illegitimate son of the heir to a great estate. It is also a tale of fathers and sons, lost and found – Otis and his son Meshak, and Sir William Ashbrook, landowner and Alexander, the son he disinherits. Jamila was inspired to tell the story by a chance remark about the mythical “Coram man” from a friend – once she had researched the background to the Coram foundation “the story seemed to have been there all along… I think I have loved these characters almost more than any I have ever created..”.
Jamila Gavin was born in India to an English mother and an Indian father. Music was her first main interest; she studied it extensively, trained as a pianist and ended up working for the BBC on music programmes. Although she had always loved reading, describing her young self as “a word addict…I read anything, even the back of cornflakes packets”, it was not until she had children and her own two children were beginning to read that she began taking a serious interest in children’s books. The motivation was the lack of books that reflected her own ethnically mixed background and the rich diversity that Britain now enjoyed. As she says, “All children need to read books about characters with whom they can identify. I very much wanted to write for them and about them.”
Jamila now lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire. A previous book, The Wheel of Surya, was the runner-up for the 1993 Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Federation of Children’s Books Award. It is also a GCSE setbook. Grandpa Chatterji has been televised for Channel 4. Jamila’s current ambitions, “apart from abolishing war” are to sail up the Amazon and take part in the Monte Carlo Rally before she’s “too old”.
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARD WINNERS
The four Whitbread (category) Award winners were announced on 4th January 2000, and they are as follows:
Whitbread Novel Award
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
Whitbread First Novel Award
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Whitbread Poetry Award
The Asylum Dance by John Burnside
Whitbread Biography Award
Bad Blood - A Memoir by Lorna Sage
WHITBREAD NOVEL AWARD: English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
Judges: Sally Beauman, Rachel Holmes, Alex Linklater
Kneale’s extraordinary novel closely interweaves two tales, the first of a group of Englishmen in search of the true site of the Garden of Eden and the second the plight of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, fighting to survive against the colonial British. Garnering impressive reviews, English Passengers narrowly missed out on last year’s Booker prize. Kneale is no stranger to awards though – he picked up the 1987 Somerset Maugham Award for Whore Banquets in 1987 and the 1992 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Sweet Thames. This is the first time he has been shortlisted for the Whitbread.
What the Whitbread judges said: “English Passengers reads like a dream - one of the most enjoyable books we’ve ever read for pure, unadulterated, page-turning excitement. Unquestionably the novel of the year for its stunning historical depth, superb control of narrative and masterly mix of tragedy and comedy, and for Kneale’s remarkable ability to deal with complex historical truths without ever resorting to bogus hypocritical cant. An absolute delight, from start to finish.”
WHITBREAD FIRST NOVEL AWARD: White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Judges: Minette Walters, Paul Davies, Penny Vincenzi
Perhaps one of the most outstanding – and deservedly hyped - debuts of recent years, White Teeth, written by Smith at the tender age of 23, already has an impressive pedigree. Feted by Salman Rushdie as “an astonishingly assured debut” and shortlisted for the Orange Prize in June, Smith’s sprawling London epic also picked up the Guardian First Book Award last month. According to Zadie herself in her review of the book for Butterfly magazine, “White Teeth is the literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired tap-dancing 10-year old”.
What the Whitbread judges said: “Not only the best first novel we’ve read in ages but one of the best novels we’ve ever read, and perhaps the best novel about contemporary London. White Teeth was chose for its breathtaking coincidence, superb ear for dialogue and fantastically assured control of a panoramic plot. A landmark first novel.”
WHITBREAD POETRY AWARD: The Asylum Dance by John Burnside
Judges: Jo Shapcott, David Lea, Jon Turney
During another impressive year for poetry, according to the category judges, The Asylum Dance stood out for its tender lyricism and deep sense of humanity. Burnside is no stranger to prizes – his 1992 collection Feast Days won him the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize while The Asylum Dance has also been shortlisted for the 2000 T S Eliot Prize. Burnside, who lives in Fife, has recently given up a career in computer programming and is a writer-in-residence at Dundee University.
What the Whitbread judges said: “With its stunning unity of tone, style and purpose, The Asylum Dance is also not an easy book to describe, perhaps because it constantly strives to evoke what is beyond the sayable. It is a deeply spiritual book while at the same time a very physical one, filled with a wide sense of humanity. Burnside’s poems have the rare power to alter one’s perception of the world and of language. A sensory delight with an epiphany on every page, and a collection that gets richer with every reading.”
WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD: Bad Blood - A Memoir by Lorna Sage
Judges: Michael Holroyd, Claire Minett, David Sexton
Chosen by many writers as their personal Book of the Year, Bad Blood, according to one critic, is “not just an exquisite personal memoir (but).. a vital piece of our collective past.” Sage’s remarkable memoir, recounting her extraordinary family life in bleak, post-war Britain – a world of rural despair, teenage pregnancy and stiff social hypocrisy - beat off stiff competition from acclaimed biographies of Fanny Burney, Ruskin and Hitler. More remarkable still is Sage’s own remarkable escape into academia – a highly regarded literary critic, she is currently Professor of English at the University of East Anglia.
What the Whitbread judges said:
“Like nothing we’ve ever read before, this tragi-comic autobiographical story of one young woman’s escape from a claustrophobic background in post-war Britain manages to tell the story of not just the author’s family but of many others – in stark, direct, intensely courageous prose. Bad Blood is a brave, compelling book that will have a huge impact on all who read it.”
These four winners each receive £3,500 and will now go on to compete for the Whitbread Book of the Year alongside the winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year. Both will be selected on Tuesday 23rd January 2001 by a panel of ten judges, chaired by Sir Tim Rice, and then announced at a presentation ceremony at Whitbread’s headquarters. This will be hosted by Sheena McDonald and broadcast by BBC-2. The programme will include a panel discussion of the shortlisted books chaired by Joan Bakewell, and featuring David Baddiel, Rosie Boycott and Ian Hislop, as well as coverage of the announcement of the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Whitbread Book of the Year.
SIR TIM RICE TO CHAIR
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS FINAL JUDGING PANEL
Olympic gold medallist and Oxbridge graduate Matthew Pinsent invited to judge
· TV personalities Alan Davies, Penny Smith and Clare Balding on the final panel
·
Award-winning lyricist Sir Tim Rice will chair the final judging panel for the 2000 Whitbread Book Awards (incorporating the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year and 2000 Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year), it was announced today.
Joining Sir Tim will be Olympic gold medallist Matthew Pinsent, comedian Alan Davies, TV personality Penny Smith, BBC TV presenter Clare Balding and five authors, each representing their category judging panel. The panel will meet on Tuesday 23rd January 2001 to select the winners of both awards, worth over £25,000 in total, which will be announced at a ceremony later that evening.
David Reed, Director of Corporate Affairs for Whitbread plc, said, “Whitbread has always celebrated excellence and diversity in contemporary writing with books that can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of age or background. Each of our panel this year combines excellence in their chosen field with a passion for books.”
The ten judges for the two awards are:
Sir Tim Rice Lyricist
Clare Balding BBC TV and Radio 5 Live Presenter
Sally Beauman Writer, representing the Novel Award judges
Alan Davies Comedian and actor
Michael Holroyd Writer, representing the Biography Award judges
Michael Morpurgo Writer, representing the Children’s Book of the Year judges
Matthew Pinsent Sportsman, Olympic gold medallist
Jo Shapcott Poet, representing the Poetry Award judges
Penny Smith Broadcaster
Minette Walters Writer, representing the First Novel Award judges
continued…SIR TIM RICE TO CHAIR 2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS FINAL JUDGING PANEL (continued…2)
The Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year, a separate prize worth £3,500, will be chosen from a shortlist of four books. The winner will then go through, alongside the Novel, First Novel, Biography and Poetry Award winners, to the shortlist for the Whitbread Book of the Year, worth £22,500. Shortlists are attached.
FINAL JUDGING PANEL
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS
Sir Tim Rice has written the lyrics for numerous musicals that have played in the West End and subsequently around the world, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Chess and the films Aladdin and The Lion King, to name but a few. He has collaborated with artists such as Elton John and Cliff Richard and won three Best Song Oscars in a distinguished career. Sir Tim is chairman of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, an organisation that has distributed over £300 million to sporting and artistic causes in the UK. He also runs his own cricket team, writing a column on the game for the Daily Telegraph. The first volume of his autobiography, Oh What A Circus, was published in September 1999. Sir Tim was knighted in 1994.
Clare Balding presents all the BBC’s live racing coverage, including the Grand National, Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood and is a popular guest on programmes including A Question of Sport, They Think It’s All Over and Call My Bluff. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as presenting Ramblings with Clare Balding for BBC Radio 4. Clare has a weekly column in the Evening Standard addressing topical issues in all sports and has also contributed to the Sunday Telegraph, The Sporting Life and Racing Post, amongst others. A Cambridge graduate, Clare was elected President of the Union in 1992. Clare was champion lady rider in 1990 and leading amateur flat jockey in 1989 and 1990.
Sally Beauman was born in Devon, went to school in Bristol and took her degree at Cambridge. She worked as a journalist in America and England and has written for numerous publications from the Daily Telegraph to the New Yorker. Her non-fiction books include a history of the Royal Shakespeare Company and she has written five best-selling novels, Destiny, Dark Angel, Lovers & Liars, Danger Zones and Sextet. Her new novel, Rebecca’s Tale, which re-examines from the first wife’s point of view the events in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, will be published in the UK and America in September.
Alan Davies was brought up in Loughton and attended Bancroft’s school in Woodford Green, where by his own admission, he was virtually “permanently in detention”. In a perverse sense the significant “residual anger” he felt at the time made him who he is today. Five months after graduating from the University of Kent in 1988, he was earning his living on the comedy circuit, with future stars like Steve Coogan, Jack Dee and Reeves & Mortimer also doing the rounds. Within six months Davies had secured his first TV spot. In 1994 he won the critics award at the Edinburgh Festival. As well as being one of today’s most popular stand-up comedians, Alan Davies has also appeared in numerous TV and radio productions including award-winning BBC drama Jonathan Creek and the recent A Many Splintered Thing. Alan is 32 and has recently bought a house in Islington.
Michael Holroyd was born in 1935 and educated at Eton College and the Maidenhead Public Library. He has written biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw, as well as a family memoir, Basil Street Blues. He has also been Chairman of the Society of Authors and President of English PEN and currently chairs the Council of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1989 he was awarded the CBE for services to literature.
Michael Morpurgo is the author of more than fifty books and a previous winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award for Wreck of the Zanzibar in 1995. In his own words, he is “oldish, married with three children, and a grandfather six times over.” He hasn’t always been like that - after attending schools (in London, Sussex and Canterbury), he went on to university in London, followed by a step in the teaching profession and a job in a primary school in Kent. Living in Devon, listening to Mozart and working with children in the charity he set up with his wife twenty-five years ago, Farms for City Children, now provide him with most of the stimuli he needs to discover and write his stories. His latest book, Dear Olly, will be released in the autumn.
Matthew Pinsent had his first taste of Olympic gold at the age of only 21, when he, together with partner Steven Redgrave, won the gold medal for the coxless pairs in Barcelona. The pair have dominated their field ever since with a total of seven world championship golds during the nineties, another gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and of course, a third Olympic gold in Sydney earlier this year. Matthew graduated in geography from St Catherine’s College, Oxford in 1992 where he was also President of the Oxford Rowing Club. He was awarded the MBE in the 1993 New Year’s Honours List. He currently lives in Henley-on-Thames.
Jo Shapcott’s award-winning collections of poetry include Electroplating the Baby, Phrase Book and My Life Asleep. A selected poem, Her Book, was published by Faber earlier this year and Tender Taxes, versions of Rilke’s French poems, will also be published by Faber in 2001. She has edited an anthology of contemporary poetry, Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times with Matthew Sweeney and, with Don Patterson, Last Words. Jo has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). She is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle.
Penny Smith is GMTV’s newsreader and co-presenter of The News Hour. She joined the breakfast television station in April 1993 from Sky News. Penny began her career in 1977 as a reporter and feature writer on the Peterborough Evening Telegraph. She has travelled in Latin America and South East Asia, where she worked for Radio Television Hong Kong as well as working at Radio Trent, Central Television, Border TV and Thames News. She currently co-presents Celebrity on ITV with Andi Peters and also writes a weekly beauty column for Femail in Thursday’s edition of the Daily Mail. Penny loves opera, does yoga regularly and enjoys tennis and hiking.
Minette Walters took up the challenge of writing a crime novel, after a seven-year break from writing, when her younger son began full-time education. Her first novel, The Ice House, published in 1992, was not only a bestseller but also won the CWA John Creasey Award. Subsequent novels include The Sculptress, The Scold’s Bridle and The Dark Room, all bestsellers made into major dramatisations by the BBC. Her books have been published all over the world and translated into over 30 languages. Minette was educated at Godolphin College, Salisbury and read French at Durham University. She is married with two sons and lives in Dorset with her family. She is an expert at DIY.
SIR TIM RICE TO CHAIR
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS FINAL JUDGING PANEL
Olympic gold medallist and Oxbridge graduate Matthew Pinsent invited to judge
· TV personalities Alan Davies, Penny Smith and Clare Balding on the final panel
·
Award-winning lyricist Sir Tim Rice will chair the final judging panel for the 2000 Whitbread Book Awards (incorporating the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year and 2000 Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year), it was announced today.
Joining Sir Tim will be Olympic gold medallist Matthew Pinsent, comedian Alan Davies, TV personality Penny Smith, BBC TV presenter Clare Balding and five authors, each representing their category judging panel. The panel will meet on Tuesday 23rd January 2001 to select the winners of both awards, worth over £25,000 in total, which will be announced at a ceremony later that evening.
David Reed, Director of Corporate Affairs for Whitbread plc, said, “Whitbread has always celebrated excellence and diversity in contemporary writing with books that can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of age or background. Each of our panel this year combines excellence in their chosen field with a passion for books.”
The ten judges for the two awards are:
Sir Tim Rice Lyricist
Clare Balding BBC TV and Radio 5 Live Presenter
Sally Beauman Writer, representing the Novel Award judges
Alan Davies Comedian and actor
Michael Holroyd Writer, representing the Biography Award judges
Michael Morpurgo Writer, representing the Children’s Book of the Year judges
Matthew Pinsent Sportsman, Olympic gold medallist
Jo Shapcott Poet, representing the Poetry Award judges
Penny Smith Broadcaster
Minette Walters Writer, representing the First Novel Award judges
continued…SIR TIM RICE TO CHAIR 2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS FINAL JUDGING PANEL (continued…2)
The Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year, a separate prize worth £3,500, will be chosen from a shortlist of four books. The winner will then go through, alongside the Novel, First Novel, Biography and Poetry Award winners, to the shortlist for the Whitbread Book of the Year, worth £22,500. Shortlists are attached.
Final judges in previous years have included Jonathan Ross, Jerry Hall, Ian Hislop, Kirsty Young and Maureen Lipman, amongst others. BBC-2 will broadcast the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony on Tuesday 23rd January 2001. The programme will be hosted by Joan Bakewell, and will include a panel discussion of the shortlisted books featuring David Baddiel, Rosie Boycott and Ian Hislop. The programme will include live coverage of the announcement of the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year.
FINAL JUDGING PANEL
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS
Sir Tim Rice has written the lyrics for numerous musicals that have played in the West End and subsequently around the world, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Chess and the films Aladdin and The Lion King, to name but a few. He has collaborated with artists such as Elton John and Cliff Richard and won three Best Song Oscars in a distinguished career. Sir Tim is chairman of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, an organisation that has distributed over £300 million to sporting and artistic causes in the UK. He also runs his own cricket team, writing a column on the game for the Daily Telegraph. The first volume of his autobiography, Oh What A Circus, was published in September 1999. Sir Tim was knighted in 1994.
Clare Balding presents all the BBC’s live racing coverage, including the Grand National, Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood and is a popular guest on programmes including A Question of Sport, They Think It’s All Over and Call My Bluff. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as presenting Ramblings with Clare Balding for BBC Radio 4. Clare has a weekly column in the Evening Standard addressing topical issues in all sports and has also contributed to the Sunday Telegraph, The Sporting Life and Racing Post, amongst others. A Cambridge graduate, Clare was elected President of the Union in 1992. Clare was champion lady rider in 1990 and leading amateur flat jockey in 1989 and 1990.
Sally Beauman was born in Devon, went to school in Bristol and took her degree at Cambridge. She worked as a journalist in America and England and has written for numerous publications from the Daily Telegraph to the New Yorker. Her non-fiction books include a history of the Royal Shakespeare Company and she has written five best-selling novels, Destiny, Dark Angel, Lovers & Liars, Danger Zones and Sextet. Her new novel, Rebecca’s Tale, which re-examines from the first wife’s point of view the events in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, will be published in the UK and America in September.
Alan Davies was brought up in Loughton and attended Bancroft’s school in Woodford Green, where by his own admission, he was virtually “permanently in detention”. In a perverse sense the significant “residual anger” he felt at the time made him who he is today. Five months after graduating from the University of Kent in 1988, he was earning his living on the comedy circuit, with future stars like Steve Coogan, Jack Dee and Reeves & Mortimer also doing the rounds. Within six months Davies had secured his first TV spot. In 1994 he won the critics award at the Edinburgh Festival. As well as being one of today’s most popular stand-up comedians, Alan Davies has also appeared in numerous TV and radio productions including award-winning BBC drama Jonathan Creek and the recent A Many Splintered Thing. Alan is 32 and has recently bought a house in Islington.
Michael Holroyd was born in 1935 and educated at Eton College and the Maidenhead Public Library. He has written biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw, as well as a family memoir, Basil Street Blues. He has also been Chairman of the Society of Authors and President of English PEN and currently chairs the Council of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1989 he was awarded the CBE for services to literature.
Michael Morpurgo is the author of more than fifty books and a previous winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award for Wreck of the Zanzibar in 1995. In his own words, he is “oldish, married with three children, and a grandfather six times over.” He hasn’t always been like that - after attending schools (in London, Sussex and Canterbury), he went on to university in London, followed by a step in the teaching profession and a job in a primary school in Kent. Living in Devon, listening to Mozart and working with children in the charity he set up with his wife twenty-five years ago, Farms for City Children, now provide him with most of the stimuli he needs to discover and write his stories. His latest book, Dear Olly, will be released in the autumn.
Matthew Pinsent had his first taste of Olympic gold at the age of only 21, when he, together with partner Steven Redgrave, won the gold medal for the coxless pairs in Barcelona. The pair have dominated their field ever since with a total of seven world championship golds during the nineties, another gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and of course, a third Olympic gold in Sydney earlier this year. Matthew graduated in geography from St Catherine’s College, Oxford in 1992 where he was also President of the Oxford Rowing Club. He was awarded the MBE in the 1993 New Year’s Honours List. He currently lives in Henley-on-Thames.
Jo Shapcott’s award-winning collections of poetry include Electroplating the Baby, Phrase Book and My Life Asleep. A selected poem, Her Book, was published by Faber earlier this year and Tender Taxes, versions of Rilke’s French poems, will also be published by Faber in 2001. She has edited an anthology of contemporary poetry, Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times with Matthew Sweeney and, with Don Patterson, Last Words. Jo has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). She is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle.
Penny Smith is GMTV’s newsreader and co-presenter of The News Hour. She joined the breakfast television station in April 1993 from Sky News. Penny began her career in 1977 as a reporter and feature writer on the Peterborough Evening Telegraph. She has travelled in Latin America and South East Asia, where she worked for Radio Television Hong Kong as well as working at Radio Trent, Central Television, Border TV and Thames News. She currently co-presents Celebrity on ITV with Andi Peters and also writes a weekly beauty column for Femail in Thursday’s edition of the Daily Mail. Penny loves opera, does yoga regularly and enjoys tennis and hiking.
Minette Walters took up the challenge of writing a crime novel, after a seven-year break from writing, when her younger son began full-time education. Her first novel, The Ice House, published in 1992, was not only a bestseller but also won the CWA John Creasey Award. Subsequent novels include The Sculptress, The Scold’s Bridle and The Dark Room, all bestsellers made into major dramatisations by the BBC. Her books have been published all over the world and translated into over 30 languages. Minette was educated at Godolphin College, Salisbury and read French at Durham University. She is married with two sons and lives in Dorset with her family. She is an expert at DIY.
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS - SHORTLISTS
SHORTLISTS
2000 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS
· Thirtieth anniversary of the Awards
· A total of 426 entries submitted (second highest ever)
· Increase in total prize fund to £40,000 - one of the largest prize funds in UK
· Two Booker nominees on shortlist for Whitbread Novel Award: Matthew Kneale (English Passengers) and Kazuo Ishiguro (When We Were Orphans)
· Zadie Smith on Whitbread First Novel Award shortlist with White Teeth
· Will Self nominated for the Whitbread Novel Award with How the Dead Live
· Ian Kershaw nominated again for Whitbread Biography Award, (first volume of Hitler nominated in 1998)
Whitbread is delighted to announce the shortlists for the 2000 Whitbread Book Awards, featuring some of the most enjoyable and acclaimed books of the past year. Comprising the Whitbread Awards for Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography and Children’s Book of the Year, entries for the awards this year totalled 426 books, the second highest in Whitbread history.
Established in 1971 by Whitbread, the UK’s leading leisure company, the Whitbread Book Awards, which traditionally encourage readers to celebrate the very best in contemporary British writing, will celebrate their thirtieth anniversary this year. For the second year running, the winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year will also be eligible for the overall Whitbread Book of the Year award.
The four category Award winners in Novel, First Novel, Biography and Poetry will be announced on Thursday 4th January 2001. The winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book and Book of the Year will be selected and announced on Tuesday 23rd January 2001 at the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony which will be covered live on BBC-2.
In alphabetical order by author the shortlists are:
2000 Whitbread Novel Award shortlist (5 books)
Fred & Edie by Jill Dawson, Sceptre
What Are You Like? by Anne Enright, Cape
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber & Faber
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale, Hamish Hamilton
How the Dead Live by Will Self, Bloomsbury
2000 Whitbread First Novel Award shortlist (4 books)
Under the Skin by Michel Faber, Canongate Books
Danny Boy by Jo-Ann Goodwin, Bantam Press
Born Free by Laura Hird, Canongate Books
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, Hamish Hamilton
2000 Whitbread Poetry Award shortlist (5 books)
The Asylum Dance by John Burnside, Cape Poetry
Conjure by Michael Donaghy, Picador
Collected Poems by R F Langley, Carcanet
Floods by Maurice Riordan, Faber & Faber
Granny Scarecrow by Anne Stevenson, Bloodaxe Books
2000 Whitbread Biography Award shortlist (4 books)
Fanny Burney by Claire Harman, Harper Collins
John Ruskin - The Later Years by Tim Hilton, Yale University Press
Hitler - 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw, Allen Lane The Penguin Press
Bad Blood - A Memoir by Lorna Sage, Fourth Estate
2000 Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year shortlist (4 books)
Heaven Eyes by David Almond, Hodder
Arthur: The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Orion
Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin, Egmont
Troy by Adele Geras, Scholastic