• Widely publicised ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’ included in First Novel Award shortlist, alongside a book written by a former farm labourer-turned-lecturer
• Novel Award features 2004 Man Booker and Orange Prize winners, plus Kate Atkinson and Louis de Bernières
• All female Children’s Book Award shortlist 
• Poetry Award shortlist includes two debut collections

Whitbread today announces the shortlists for the 2004 Whitbread Book Awards in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book Award categories.  The Awards recognise the most enjoyable books of last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland and were established by Whitbread, the UK’s leading hospitality business, in 1971.

This year the awards attracted 450 entries – the second highest total ever - and included a record number of entries (113) in the Children’s Book Award category.  Each category’s shortlist was chosen by a panel of judges, who this year included writer, broadcaster and former Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley; authors Jenny Colgan, Amanda Craig, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Joanne Harris; poet and author Lavinia Greenlaw and ITV news presenter Katie Derham.

Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on Wednesday 6th January 2005.  The overall winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year will receive £25,000 and will be selected and announced at the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday 25th January 2005.

The Whitbread Book Awards, in partnership with the National Reading Campaign, CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), amazon.co.uk and the Booksellers Association, continue to explore new ways of promoting the enjoyment of reading in the UK.

Whitbread PLC, which was originally founded in 1742, is the UK's leading hospitality business, managing some of the UK's strongest brands in hotels, restaurants and racquets, health and fitness clubs. The 50,000 people who work in Whitbread’s businesses serve 10 million customers each month at more than 1,400 locations across the UK.

Full details of the shortlists follow. 

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2004 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS SHORTLISTS

2004 Whitbread Novel Award shortlist
Kate Atkinson: Case Histories Doubleday
Louis de Bernières: Birds Without Wings Secker and Warburg
Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty Picador
Andrea Levy: Small Island Headline

2004 Whitbread First Novel Award shortlist
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Bloomsbury
Richard Collins: The Land as Viewed from the Sea Seren Books
Susan Fletcher: Eve Green Fourth Estate
Panos Karnezis: The Maze Jonathan Cape

2004 Whitbread Biography Award shortlist
John Guy: My Heart is my Own:The Life of Mary Queen of Scots Fourth Estate
David McKie: Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Rogue Atlantic Books
John Sutherland: Stephen Spender Viking
Jeremy Treglown: V.S. Pritchett: A Life Chatto & Windus

2004 Whitbread Poetry Award shortlist
Leontia Flynn: These Days Jonathan Cape
John Fuller: Ghosts Chatto & Windus
Matthew Hollis: Ground Water Bloodaxe Books
Michael Symmons Roberts: Corpus Jonathan Cape

2004 Whitbread Children’s Book Award shortlist
Anne Cassidy: Looking for JJ Scholastic Children’s Books
Geraldine McCaughrean: Not the End of the World Oxford University Press
Meg Rosoff: How I Live Now Puffin Books
Ann Turnbull: No Shame, No Fear Walker Books

Photography of authors and book jackets can be accessed, royalty-free,  through the image library on this site.  For further information or assistance, please contact Johnny Abbott, (direct line) 020 7202 2822 or email: [email protected]
 
Shortlist for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award (124 entries)
Judges
Toby Bourne        Buyer Books, ASDA
Jenny Colgan       Writer
Amanda Craig       Author
 
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
(Doubleday)
A jealous husband suspects his wife. Two spinsters make a shocking find.  A solicitor investigates an old murder. A nurse lost her niece; a widow her cats.  Former police officer Jackson Brodie is 45 but feels much older, with a failed marriage behind him and adrift in Cambridgeshire, in which he has never settled. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own troubles face him head on.
Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. She has won several prizes for her short stories. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year.
Judges:  “A daring and entirely successful foray into crime writing by Atkinson, which showcases her exceptional skills at handling loss, characters and atmosphere whilst maintaining a compulsive readability.”

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières
(Secker & Warburg)
Set against the background of the collapsing Ottoman empire, the Gallipoli campaign, and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks, Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in South West Anatolia – a community in which Christian and Moslem lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully over the centuries and in which friendship, even love, can transcend religious differences. 
Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954 and joined the army at 18, but left after spending four months at Sandhurst.  He was selected as one of the Granta twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993.  Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, his fourth novel, won a Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1995 and has sold 2.4 million copies.
Judges:  “Through vivid and affectionate characterisation and a wonderful sense of place, de Bernières has woven an intensely readable tale of the birth of a nation struggling with racial and religious hatred.  What seems to be a distant and exotic setting has immediate and contemporary resonance.” 

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
(Picador)
In the summer of 1983, 20-year old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Tory MP Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby – whom Nick had idolised at Oxford – and Catherine.  Starting at the moment The Swimming-Pool Library ended, The Line of Beauty traces the further history of a decade of change and tragedy.
Alan Hollinghurst is the author of three previous novels, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star and The Spell.  Born in Gloucestershire in 1954, he studied at Oxford where he then went on to teach.  He was the Deputy Editor of Times Literary Supplement for some years.  Alan Hollinghurst lives in London and The Line of Beauty won the 2004 Man Booker Prize.
Judges:  “The Line of Beauty satirises the Thatcherite era through the eyes of a young gay man adopted as a guest by a rich upper-class family.  Devastatingly funny, exquisitely written and a poignant account of an intelligent, sensitive individual seduction and corruption by worldly ambition, it is a masterpiece.”

Small Island by Andrea Levy
(Headline)
It is 1948 in an England that is still shaken by war.  Queenie Bligh takes into her house lodgers who have recently arrived from Jamaica.  Among her tenants are Gilbert and his new wife Hortense.  Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the war to fight against Hitler.  On returning to England after the war he finds himself treated very differently now that he is no longer in a blue uniform.  Queenie’s neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband were he there. 
Andrea Levy works and lives in London, and has used the city as the setting in all her novels.  Small Island is her fourth novel and won the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. Besides novels she has also written short stories that have been read on radio, published in newspapers and anthologised.
Judges:  “Consistently surprising and pleasurable, Small Island tells the story of two couples, one Jamaican, whom fate throws together in post-war London.  Funny, moving, imaginative and fiercely intelligent, it tells us about an important yet neglected part of our island history, and enriches the reader’s heart and mind.” 
 

Shortlist for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award (52 entries)
Judges
Caroline Gascoigne      Literary Editor, Sunday Times
Joanne Harris              Author
Robert Palmer             Formerly Product Manager, Foyles

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
(Bloomsbury)
Centuries ago, when magic still existed in England, the greatest magician of all was the Raven King, a human child brought up by fairies. Now at the beginning of the 19th century, he is barely more than a legend, and England no longer believes in practical magic. Then the reclusive Mr Norrell appears and news spreads of the return of magic.  He meets a brilliant young magician, Jonathan Strange, and together they dazzle the country with their feats - but their partnership soon turns to rivalry.
Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959, and spent her childhood in towns in Northern England and Scotland, before going to St Hilda’s College, Oxford.  She now lives in Cambridge with her partner, the novelist and reviewer Colin Greenland, whom she met on an Arvon Creative Writing Course ten years ago when she was beginning Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Judges: “A wonderfully vast and sprawling Gothic novel of the old tradition – truly original, intricately inventive and with a story that combines elements of archetypal fantasy with the familiar landmarks of English history in a way that both challenges the intellect and satisfies the child within.”

The Land as Viewed from the Sea by Richard Collins
(Seren Books)
Two friends work together on a smallholding: one allows the other to read the novel he is writing, The Land as Viewed from the Sea. As the novel unfolds, fiction begins to intrude upon reality, redefining the friends' relationship, and threatening to change their lives forever.
Richard Collins has been a farm labourer, gardener and estate worker. He lives with his family in west Wales and teaches at the Institute of Rural Studies in Llanbadarn.
Judges:  “Fresh, surprising and ambitious, Richard Collins’ dark-hearted love story is a gripping tale that unfolds with immense narrative skill.”

Eve Green by Susan Fletcher
(Fourth Estate)
Following the loss of her mother, eight-year-old Evie is sent to a new life in rural Wales – a dripping place, where flowers appear mysteriously on doorsteps and people look at her twice.  With a sense of being lied to, she sets out to discover her family’s dark secret – unaware that there is yet more darkness to come with the sinister disappearance of local girl Rosemary Hughes. 
Susan Fletcher was born in 1979 in Birmingham. She recently graduated from the prestigious UEA Creative Writing course and now lives in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Judges:  “A very beautiful novel, which captures the joys and horrors of childhood, the warmth of love and the magic of the countryside.  There is a terrific sense of place in this novel: a feeling of seasons passing and a luminous quality of writing which lifts it out of the category of a simple coming-of-age novel into something approaching poetry.”

The Maze by Panos Karnezis
(Jonathan Cape)
Set in Anatolia in 1922, The Maze is the story of a retreating Greek brigade that has lost its way and is pursued by a Turkish army that seeks to avenge three years of Greek occupation.  Commanded by a brigadier with a passion for Greek mythology and an addiction to morphia, the brigade’s only chance of salvation is to reach the Mediterranean coast and sail home.
Panos Karnezis was born in Greece in 1967. He came to England in 1992 to study engineering, and worked in industry before starting to write.  A graduate of the UEA Creative Writing course, he is also the author of Little Infamies, a collection of short stories published in 2002.  He lives in London.
Judges: “Subtle and quietly moving, a book that remains with the reader long after they have finished.”

Shortlist for the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award (105 entries)
Judges
Claire Armitstead      Literary Editor, The Guardian
Roy Hattersley         Writer and Broadcaster
Mary James              Aldeburgh Bookshop

Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Rogue by David McKie
(Atlantic Books)
Jabez was a businessman, philanthropist, politician, temperance campaigner and charmer. He was also an astonishing scoundrel – a liar, adulterer and cheat – who perpetrated the most destructive fraud of the nineteenth century.
David McKie joined the Guardian newspaper in 1965, where he was deputy editor from 1975 to 1984. He now writes the ‘Elsewhere’ and ‘Smallweed’ columns for the paper and is author of Great British Bus Journeys.
Judges:  “This compelling and beautifully-written story of a previously unknown Victorian Member of Parliament - who falls for all the temptations which politicians face, is as readable as it is relevant to contemporary corruption in high places.  It is also irresistibly funny – the proper reaction to politics, now as then.” 

Stephen Spender by John Sutherland
(Viking)
Few writers have dominated their time as authoritatively as Stephen Spender (1909-1995).  Spender burst onto the literary scene with his first collection of poems in 1933.  It was a poetic decade and Spender was, T. S. Eliot declared, ‘The Lyric Poet of his Generation’.  Spender, who had spent the early 1930s in Germany, became an engaged socialist and, very briefly, a communist.
John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is author of many works of literary criticism, biography and publishing history and is one of Britain’s best-known literary reviewers with a regular column in The Guardian.
Judges: “Stephen Spender is the lesser known third man of a remarkable triumvirate.  The authorised biography tells his story – the poetry, the politics and the private life – in a way that rightly establishes him as a major figure in English literature.  Affectionate, but not sycophantic, honest without being offensive, it is the perfectly balanced biography.”  

My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy
(Fourth Estate)
She was crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months of age, and Queen of France at 16 years; at 18 she ascended the throne that was her birthright and began ruling one of the most fractious courts in Europe, riven by religious conflict and personal lust for power. She rode out at the head of an army in both victory and defeat; saw her second husband assassinated, and married his murderer. At 25 she entered captivity at the hands of her rival queen, from which only death would release her.
John Guy is the author of numerous histories, including Tudor England. He is a Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge and became an Honorary Research Professor of the University of St Andrews in 2003.
Judges:  “The extraordinary story of the tragic queen who spent 19 of her 44 years in captivity is told with verve, sympathy and insight by Professor John Guy.  Examining the contemporary and archival evidence with a fresh and scholarly eye, Guy presents a fascinating portrait of this brilliant, flawed woman.”

V.S. Pritchett: A Life by Jeremy Treglown
(Chatto & Windus)
V.S. Pritchett was born in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1900 to a mother who was illiterate but a natural story-teller, and a larger-than-life, Micawber-like father, whose catastrophes kept the family always on the move. At 16 he left school to work in the leather trade, and at 20, just after World War I, he daringly moved to Paris and became a journalist, first in Ireland, then in Spain. 
Jeremy Treglown is Professor of English at Warwick University and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement.  He is the author of acclaimed biographies of Roald Dahl and the novelist Henry Green.
Judges:  “This is one of the best-judged literary biographies of recent years.  Pritchett is at present in the awkward eclipse that often comes after a long and successful career.  Treglown sends you back to the stories.  He has also provided a fascinating and moving portrait of a writer’s marriage – arguably of any marriage - in which genuine love is thrown into conflict with inequality of opportunity and expectation.”
 

Shortlist for the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award (56 entries)
Judges
Philip Bell               Blackwell’s Oxford
Lavinia Greenlaw      Poet and Author
Luke Leitch             Arts Correspondent, Evening Standard

These Days by Leontia Flynn
(Jonathan Cape)
In one of the most strikingly original debuts in recent years, Leontia Flynn writes about Belfast and the north of Ireland with a precision and tenderness that is completely fresh. While her subject matter ranges from memories of childhood to the instabilities of adulthood, from the raw domestic to the restless pull of ‘elsewhere’, her theme throughout is a search for physical and mental well-being, for a way to live a life.
Leontia Flynn was born in Belfast in 1974, where she has just finished a PhD at Queen’s University.  She was awarded an Eric Gregory Award in 2001 and was chosen as one of twenty Next Generation Poets in June 2004, plus won the 2004 Forward Prize for Poetry for best first collection.
Judges:  "A breathtakingly accomplished debut, These Days transforms Flynn's everyday experiences into literary jewels. She has exceptional insight and the writerly rigour of a poet many years her senior.  Each poem is a discovery - Flynn is a fantastic young voice who deserves a wider readership ready to discover her for themselves."

Ghosts by John Fuller
(Chatto & Windus)
Ghosts is John Fuller’s fifteenth collection of poetry. Like the possible phantoms that stalk the dark passageways of its title poem in this beautiful and intensely personal collection, John explores the grey areas between life and death.  Full of self-deprecating wit and subtle insight, the poems contemplate the inevitability that, when one reaches a certain age, the moment of one’s own passing will start to haunt one.
John Fuller is an acclaimed poet and novelist. His fourteen previous collections of poetry include Now and for a Time in 2002 and Stones and Fires, which won the 1996 Forward Poetry Prize. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Judges:  “The poems of John Fuller’s Ghosts are poised at the moment of loss.  This ranges from the death of a loved one through to the inconceivable scale of September 11.  Fuller’s crafted, musical poems look back through his own life and beyond into our shared elegiac history.”

Ground Water by Matthew Hollis
(Bloodaxe Books)
In his sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux - the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water - threaten and comfort by turns.
Matthew Hollis was born in 1971 in Norwich. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999 and is a co-editor of 101 Poems Against War and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, and works as an editor at Faber & Faber.  Ground Water is his first full-length collection.
Judges: “Matthew Hollis’s first collection of poems introduces us to his wonderfully elegant and assured voice.  Comforting and enlightening by turn, these poems deal with some conventional issues of love and loss with a beauty and fluidity rare in young poets.”

Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts
(Jonathan Cape)
Corpus – Michael Symmons Roberts’ ambitious and inventive fourth collection – centres around the body.  Mystical, philosophical and erotic, the bodies in these poems move between different worlds – life and after-life, death and resurrection – encountering pathologists’ blades, geneticists’ maps and the wounds of love and war.
Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire, in 1963. He has published three previous books of poetry, Soft Keys (1993), Raising Sparks (1999) and Burning Babylon (2001) and is a frequent collaborator with the composer James MacMillan. He is also an award-winning radio writer, and makes documentary films for the BBC.
Judges: “Corpus is a profound and thrilling engagement with our selves, our bodies and our world.  From the horribly physical through the sensual to the divine, its surreal flights are grounded in the kind of truth that we learn from and want to return to.”
 

Shortlist for the 2004 Whitbread Children’s Book Award (113 entries)
Judges
Kevin Crossley-Holland           Author
Katie Derham                        ITV News Presenter
Lizo Mzimba                          CBBC Newsround presenter
Sharon Sperling                    Vice-Chair, CILIP Youth Libraries Group
Sarah Hayes (Young Judge)     CBBC Newsround, ‘Presspacker’
Adam Pipe (Young Judge)       CBBC Newsround, ‘Presspacker’

Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy
(Scholastic Children's Books)
Looking for JJ tells the story of Jennifer Jones, who is convicted of manslaughter as a ten-year-old.  Following six years in a secure unit, she's released under a new identity.  The novel looks back at the day when three girls went out on an adventure and only two came back, and examines JJ's life afterwards as she tries to avoid being discovered by the press and begins to face up to her notoriety.
Anne Cassidy was born in London in 1952 and was a teacher in London schools for 19 years before she turned to writing full-time, specialising in crime stories and thrillers for teenagers.
Judges: “A powerful story that gets behind the tabloid image of a child murderer, revealing complex themes of loyalty, identity, trust, forgiveness and redemption, as well as exploring the conflict between private life and public interest."

Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean
(Oxford University Press)
Timna is Noah’s dutiful and unwed daughter; her destiny is to care for her parents when they reach old age. When the rains come, she leaves on the Ark with her family and watches on in horror as her friends and neighbours are washed, indeed sometimes pushed, away to their deaths.  Her father has told her that the earth must be purged of abomination and sin but, unbeknownst to Noah, Timna has set in motion a chain of events that will drastically affect God’s plan.
Geraldine McCaughrean was born and educated in Enfield, North London, the third and youngest child of a fireman and a teacher.  She attended Christ Church College of Education but instead of teaching chose to work for a magazine publishing house.  She has won two Whitbread Children’s Book Awards (1987 and 1994).
Judges:  "Highly creative writing revealing the humans and animals behind the traditional story of the Flood.  A brave interpretation that incorporates humour and love, and asks significant and searching questions."

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
(Puffin Books)
How I Live Now is narrated by Daisy, a 15-year-old New Yorker who is dispatched by her father to stay with her charmingly shambolic family of British cousins. Just as she begins to get used to the beautiful chaos of her new life in the depths of the English countryside and finds herself falling in love, the family’s life is ripped apart by war. In the crisis that follows, Daisy has to make a journey she never anticipated.
Meg Rosoff majored in English at Harvard University, spent a brief spell at St Martin’s College of Art in London studying sculpture, fell in love with England and returned to setup home permanently.  She has had a long career in advertising and until recently was senior creative director of a major advertising agency. How I Live Now is her debut novel.
Judges: "An effective counterpoint between a savvy, sassy teenager from New York and her genteel English cousins.  Rosoff shows great delicacy in the handling of teenage love, insight into the rhythms of rural life, and the drums of war.  This is a wrenching switchback of a book, in the end about love and survival."   

No Shame, No Fear by Ann Turnbull
(Walker Books)
This historical novel tells of the love of two young people in a society that forbids their being together. Susanna Thorn is a Quaker in Restoration England, and Will Heywood a rich country gentleman, captivated and intrigued by this plain-living, independent young woman.
Ann Turnbull was born in Hertford in 1943 and brought up in south-east London. She has always loved books and knew from the age of ten that she wanted to be a writer.  She trained as a secretary and worked for eleven years before, after training to be a teacher, she did a course at college on modern children’s books.
Judges:  "A meticulously researched portrait of English society and Quakerism in 1662, and a memorable love story.  With quiet authority and a clever narrative, it deals with issues of loyalty and intolerance and skilfully invites modern parallels."
 

Notes for Editors:

1. Photography of authors and book jackets is available royalty-free from website www.whitbreadbookawards.co.uk.  To access high-resolution photography though the website, please visit PRESS OFFICE and then PHOTO LIBRARY LATEST and click on SECURE before entering password ENJOYREADING.  For further information or assistance, please contact Johnny Abbott, (direct line) 020 7202 2822 or email: [email protected]

2. The Whitbread Book Awards, which were established in 1971, aim to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.

3. To be eligible for the 2004 Awards, books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2003 and 31 October 2004.

4. The total prize fund for the Whitbread Awards now stand at £50,000. The award winners from the five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book  - each receive £5,000.

5. The overall Whitbread Book of the Year is selected from the five category Award winners with the winner receiving a further £25,000.  The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony at The Brewery, central London on January 25, 2005.

6. Since the introduction of the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won six times by a novel, three times by a first novel, four times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book. 

About Whitbread PLC:

Whitbread PLC is the UK's leading hospitality business, managing the number one brands in hotels, restaurants and racquets, health and fitness clubs, including Premier Travel Inn, Marriott (UK), Brewers Fayre, Beefeater, Costa, T.G.I. Friday's and David Lloyd Leisure, and a strategic investment in Pizza Hut (UK).

Our success is due to the 50,000 people we employ in our businesses and the skill with which they serve the 10 million
customers who each month visit our 1,400 outlets across the UK.

Whitbread's strategy is to create value for our shareholders by focusing on growth in expanding sectors of the hospitality
industry, primarily in the UK but also in selected international markets. In the financial year to March 4, 2004, Whitbread
generated pre-tax, pre-exceptional profit of £240.8m on sales of more than £1.8bn.

Founded in 1742, the company is listed on the London Stock Exchange (as WTB.L) and is a member of the FTSE 100 and FTSE4Good indices. 

Further information is available from www.whitbread.co.uk