Embargo: Not for publication before 00.00 hours on Wednesday 12 December 2001

- Actress Saffron Burrows, Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar invited to judge
- Authors including Esther Freud, Tobias Hill, Stella Tillyard and previous award winners, Jamila Gavin and Giles Foden on the panel

Channel 4 broadcaster and journalist, Jon Snow, will chair the final judging panel for the 2001 Whitbread Book Awards (incorporating the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year and 2001 Whitbread Children's Book of the Year), it was announced today.

Joining Jon are actress Saffron Burrows (Enigma), writer and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar (Goodness Gracious Me), Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis and authors Esther Freud, Tobias Hill, Jamila Gavin, Stella Tillyard and Giles Foden, each representing their category judging panel. The panel will meet on Tuesday 22nd January 2002 to select the winners of both awards, worth £30,000 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. One of the ways we achieve this is by selecting judges who come from a variety of backgrounds but share a passion for enjoyable books - the most important pre-requisite for our panel."

Established by Whitbread in 1971, the Whitbread Book Awards encourage readers to enjoy the very best in contemporary writing - previous winners include Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Ted Hughes, JK Rowling, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. This year, Whitbread has announced a new strapline - enjoy!reading - and new partnerships - with amazon.co.uk, the Library Association, the National Reading Campaign, Mencap and the Booksellers Association - to actively promote the enjoyment of reading.

The nine judges for the two awards are:

Jon Snow Broadcaster and Journalist
Sanjeev Bhaskar Writer and comedian
Saffron Burrows Actress
Esther Freud Writer, representing the Novel Award judges
Giles Foden Writer, representing the First Novel Award judges
Jamila Gavin Writer, representing the Children's Book of the Year judges
Tobias Hill Writer, representing the Poetry Award judges
Denise Lewis Heptathlete and Olympic gold medallist
Stella Tillyard Writer, representing the Biography Award judges

The Whitbread Children's Book of the Year, a separate prize worth £5,000, 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 £25,000.

Final judges in previous years have included Jonathan Ross, Jerry Hall, Ian Hislop, Kirsty Young and Alan Davies, amongst others. A short biography of each judge, including his or her favourite books, is attached.

ENDS

For further information on the Whitbread Book Awards contact Sunita Rappai at Karen Earl Sponsorship on 020 7202 2822 or e-mail [email protected].

Notes for Editors:
Photography of the judges is available royalty-free from website www.whitbread-bookawards.co.uk. High-resolution photography suitable for media reproduction. Please contact Sunita Rappai for password details on 020 7202 2822.

2001 WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS: FINAL JUDGING PANEL

Jon Snow (Broadcaster and journalist) Chairman
Jon Snow, chairman of this year's final judging panel, is the presenter of Channel 4 News. He has been a television reporter with ITN since 1986, with the last twelve years spent at Channel 4 News. He is also a primary school Governor, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, and a Trustee of both the National and Tate Galleries. He lives in Kentish Town with his partner and two teenage daughters. He describes himself as a "pathological cyclist and an indifferent water colourist".
Favourite books (in alphabetical order); Diaries: In Power by Alan Clark; The End of the Affair by Graham Greene; The Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryatt; Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer

Sanjeev Bhaskar (Actor and writer)
Sanjeev Bhaskar teamed up with musician Nitin Sawhney in 1994 to form an Asian comedy act called "Secret Asians". Their popularity grew and they were discovered by the producer of The Real McCoy who brought together the team that would eventually star in the hit comedy sketch series, Goodness Gracious Me, now in its fourth year on television. Sanjeev has been equally successful outside GGM, starring in British sitcom, Small Potatoes, and Hollywood blockbuster Notting Hill. He wrote and presented a three-part series for Channel 4 on the Kama Sutra, called Position Impossible. At the beginning of the year, Sanjeev signed a three-picture writing deal with Miramax films. He is currently starring in new BBC comedy series, Meet the Kumars, which he also wrote and devised.
Favourite books: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick; Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

Saffron Burrows (Actress)
Native Londoner Saffron Burrows, who recently starred in Enigma, first came to the attention of international audiences with her breakthrough role in Circle of Friends(1994) - earlier film roles included Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father. She went on to work on Dennis Potter's Karaoke, and since then, has starred in a variety of films, confidently mixing big-budget action films like Deep Blue Sea (1998) with acclaimed performances in art-house dramas including The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1997), Miss Julie (1999) and Timecode (1999), all directed by Mike Figgis. New projects due for release include Tempted alongside Burt Reynolds and Hotel with Rhys Ifans. Saffron, who trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School in London, is currently working on a BBC film with Jeanette Winterson. She is Vice-president of the National Civil Rights Movement.
Favourite books: Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje; Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda; "News From Nowhere" and Other Writings by William Morris; Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

Giles Foden (Writer) representing the First Novel Award judges
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967 and grew up partly in Africa. He has been an assistant editor of the Times Literary Supplement and currently works on the books pages of The Guardian. His first novel, The Last King of Scotland, won the 1998 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His second novel, Ladysmith, was published to great acclaim in 1999. Both novels are being made into feature films. His third novel, Zanzibar, is published by Faber in September 2002.
Favourite books: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg; Paradise Lost by Milton

Esther Freud (Writer) representing the Novel Award Judges
Esther Freud trained as an actress before publishing her first novel Hideous Kinky, based loosely on her childhood travelling around Morocco with her mother and sister, in 1991. Hideous Kinky was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and made into a feature film starring Kate Winslet. In 1993 she was chosen by Granta as one of the Best of Young British Novelists. Her other novels are Peerless Flats, Gaglow and most recently, The Wild, which she is currently adapting for film. Esther lives in London.
Favourite books: Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys; Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

Jamila Gavin (Writer) representing the Children's Book of the Year judges
Winner of the 2000 Whitbread Children's Book of the Year for Coram Boy, Jamila Gavin was born in India to an English mother and an Indian father and settled in England at the age of 11, where she completed her schooling and further training as a music student at Trinity College of Music, London. Her dual inheritance has permeated her writing - she is determined to reflect different ethnic origins and backgrounds in her books. Since her first book, The Magic Orange Tree, was published in 1979, she has been writing steadily. The Wheel of Surya was the runner-up for the 1993 Guardian's Children's Fiction Award, and Grandpa Chatterji was televised for Channel 4. Jamila has lived in the Stroud area for over twenty-five years and is a regular visitor to schools and libraries all over the country.
Favourite books: Viper of Milan by Marjorie Bowen; Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; Winnie-the Pooh by AA Milne

Tobias Hill (Writer) representing the Poetry Award judges
Tobias Hill was born in London. He has written three highly-acclaimed collections of poetry, Year of the Dog, Midnight in the City of Clocks and Zoo. In 1996, Hill won the Cambridge University Harper-Wood Award for Literature, in 1997 he was a Wingate Scholar and in 1998 he was London Zoo's inaugural Poet-in-Residence. Hill also writes fiction: his first book of stories, Skin, won the Pen-Macmillan Prize for Fiction, and was shortisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. His first novel, Underground, a number one bestseller, won a British Arts Council award and a Betty Trask prize, the second, The Love of Stones, has been published to acclaim in seven countries. Tobias Hill is currently a Visiting Fellow at Sussex University.
Favourite books: Disgrace by J M Coetzee; The Odyssey by Homer; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The Poems of Rumi by Rumi; History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Denise Lewis OBE (Heptathlete and Olympic gold medallist)
Considered by many to be Britain's best-ever all round athlete, Denise Lewis was born in West Bromwich in 1972. Her gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney in the Heptathlon, one of the most physically demanding events in sport, has ensured her a place in history - she joins one of only six British women to have ever won an Olympic Track and Field Gold. Her outstanding achievements were recognised by the nation when she was voted second in the 2000 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards. In addition to her remarkable track achievements, Denise has also presented television shows, penned columns for both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph and recently published her autobiography, Personal Best.
Favourite book: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Stella Tillyard (Writer) representing the Biography Award Judges
Stella Tillyard was educated at Oxford and Harvard. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning Aristocrats (winner of the Le Meilleur Livre Etranger, the History Today/Longman Book Award and the Fawcett Prize, and made into a major BBC drama series) and Citizen Lord (shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award). She is currently writing a book about George III, his brothers and sisters. Married to the historian John Brewer, she has lived most of her adult life abroad but at the moment lives in Oxford with her two children.
Favourite books: Don Juan by Byron; Tom Jones by Henry Fielding; See Under: Love by David Grossman; Paradise Lost by Milton; War And Peace by Tolstoy

ENDS

For further information contact Sunita Rappai at Karen Earl Limited on 020 7202 2822 or e-mail [email protected].