David Cohen Prize 2013
The David Cohen Prize for Literature 2013 has been awarded to the English novelist, essayist and short story writer Hilary Mantel for a lifetime of achievement in literature.
The prize, worth £40,000, was presented by the chair of judges Mark Lawson at a gala ceremony hosted at the British Library this evening.
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK's best known authors. Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
In 2006 she was awarded a CBE.
Mark Lawson, chair of judges, said of this year's winner:
It seems paradoxical that giving a major literary prize - the British Nobel Prize, as I think of it - to one of the most generally-admired and well-liked people in the literary world will be, for some, controversial. This is because of a feeling - voiced by some pundits and perhaps secretly thought by authors who feel unrewarded - that Hilary Mantel has recently been given too much too quickly. That issue, however, was rapidly dismissed by the judges. Crucially, while the writer's other recent prizes have been for two recent books, the David Cohen Prize assesses and rewards an entire career to date. In the case of Hilary Mantel, this means 28 years of work that has produced 13 books ranging across historical and contemporary novels, short stories and a memoir.
While the judges were as impressed as most readers by Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, it is our particular hope that this prize for three decades of dedication to the possibilities of narrative imagination and English prose will direct attention to such earlier works as the novels Fludd, A Change of Climate and Beyond Black and the autobiography Giving Up The Ghost. Consideration of this remarkable career soon led us to feel that we had had enough of anyone who will moan that Hilary Mantel has already had enough prizes. It would be ludicrous if a history of high achievement somehow disbarred a writer from the David Cohen Prize's list of the highest literary achievers.
On winning the Prize Hilary said:
I did at first find it a little bit hard to take in because my husband gave me the news and I said "Oh I think you mean I've been invited to the David Cohen awards". It was not on my horizon, but of course, here I am and it's a very wonderful place to be.
There are some readers who think that I was born on the day Wolf Hall was published. This prize acknowledges that there are no overnight sensations in the creative arts. That's not the way it works. The ground has to be prepared and I feel that this is recognition of the fact that for many many years I've been trying to perfect my craft…I want to assure the judges that much as there is a lifetime's worth of work behind me, there is still a lifetime's worth of work still to come...
Listen to an exclusive interview with Hilary Mantel
The David Cohen Prize was established in 1992 by David and Veronica Cohen, and Arts Council England, and is recognised as one of Britain's most distinguished literary honours. The Prize has in the past been awarded to novelists, dramatists, biographers, poets and essayists. The most recent recipient of the David Cohen Prize for Literature was Julian Barnes in 2011. He joined a distinguished list of winners, including V S Naipaul, Harold Pinter, Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Doris Lessing, Beryl Bainbridge and Thom Gunn (jointly), Michael Holroyd, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney.
The John S Cohen Foundation, which was established in 1965 by David Cohen and his family funds the winner's prize. The John S Cohen Foundation has supported education and the arts, helping composers, choreographers, dancers, biographers, poets, playwrights and actors, among others.
The winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature also chooses the recipient of the Clarissa Luard Award, which is worth £12,500. The award, funded by Arts Council England, is given to a literature organisation that supports young writers and readers or an individual writer under the age of 35. Hilary Mantel presented the 2013 award to Katie Ward.
Katie Ward was born in Somerset in 1979. She has worked in the public and voluntary sectors, including at a women's refuge and for a Member of Parliament. She took a career break to write her debut novel after coming across an article about a book of portraits of female readers. In 2007 Katie was introduced to Hilary Mantel through a colleague, and Hilary took a keen interest in her work. When Girl Reading was complete, Hilary recommended it to her agent who soon had a number of publishers bidding for it. Girl Reading was published in 2011 by Virago.
Katie Ward said:
Hilary is a very special person to me. Not only is she a brilliant and perceptive author, she is also a kind and generous mentor. Over the years, she's dedicated a great deal of time to supporting new writers. I for one will always be grateful for her guidance, friendship and belief. To be receiving the Clarissa Luard Award is lovely, and a little surreal. I take it as encouragement to keep writing. It means I can finish my second novel with confidence and begin to think ahead about what I want to tackle next.
Biography
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK’s best known authors. Her books include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988); Fludd (1989) winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize; A Place of Greater Safety (1992), winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award; A Change of Climate (1994); An Experiment in Love (1995), winner of the 1996 Hawthornden Prize. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), was the MIND Book of the Year.
Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s.
Books by Hilary Mantel
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Learning to Talk
Fourth Estate
Learning to Talk
Hilary Mantel
Winner, David Cohen Prize
Stories set in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Hilary MantelHilary Mantel
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK’s best known authors. Her books include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988); Fludd (1989) winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize; A Place of Greater Safety (1992), winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award; A Change of Climate (1994); An Experiment in Love (1995), winner of the 1996 Hawthornden Prize. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), was the MIND Book of the Year.
Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s.
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Beyond Black
Harper Perennial
Beyond Black
Hilary Mantel
Winner, David Cohen Prize
Not long ago I found a copy of Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black in my local library, and read the synopsis on the cover. Oh, yuck, I thought. A bunch of occult waffle - crystal balls and ghosts and who needs it? I put it back.
What a mistake. Beyond Black is not only smart and viciously droll, but unexpectedly moving. The text has a drive and wit that carries along even sceptics like me. In fact, a viable alternative title might run, 'Spiritualism for Cynics'.
For Alison Hart, being a medium is a business. She tours the suburban satellite towns off London's ring road, Enfield, Harrow-on-the-Hill, giving tarot readings, mind-reading to crowds about the colour of their kitchen cabinets and passing along messages from dead relatives—for a fee. Meanwhile, her brisk, eternally disgusted manager Colette lobbies Inland Revenue to allow Alison to deduct the cost of her voluminous stage frocks from her taxes.
If Colette has never been completely convinced that Alison isn't a scam artist, we readers are well impressed. Al may have turned her freakishness to financial advantage, but she didn't choose to be this way, and she's no fake.
Indeed, I can personally testify to the soundness of Al's tarot readings: 'The two of pentacles is the card of the self-employed, indicating uncertainty of income, restlessness, fluctuation, an unquiet mind, and an imbalance between the output of energy and the inflow of money.' Reversed, 'it suggests mounting debt, and the swing between paralysed despair and stupid overconfidence.' Now that is a medium who knows what it's like to be a writer.
As for the ghosts, they are revolting. Yet since dead folks used to be live folks, why should deceased layabouts be any more socially palatable than flesh-and-blood corner boys?("You say they give trivial messages," says Al of the spirits, 'but that's because they're trivial people. You don't get a personality transplant when you're dead.')
The wraiths that loiter about Alison's house are down and out—crude, sexist, pig-thick, and unhygienic. Al's unkempt spirit guide and one of the novel's most marvellous creations, Morris is a terrible whinger: 'When you go to the station for a samwidge you can't get ham, you can't get a sheet of pink ham and some hot mustard like you used to get, they want to go stuffing it with all this green stuff, lettuce, and lettuce is for girls.' Morris is surly, filthy, sneering, peevish—and dangerous.
Colette is a piece of work as well—disappointed in love ('she had been able to get rid of Gavin for the modest price of a DIY divorce; it had hardly cost more than it would have to put an animal down'), casually brutal ('she had heard of women who, before departing, scissored up their husband's clothes. But Gavin's clothes, in their existing state, were punishment enough'). And Alison is a big character in every sense. Not only large hearted and haunted by what I will not give away, but massively overweight. I can't tell you how refreshing it was to come across a heroine who's fat.
A truly original novel, Beyond Black is clever, lacerating, and hugely entertaining.
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Hilary MantelHilary Mantel
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK’s best known authors. Her books include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988); Fludd (1989) winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize; A Place of Greater Safety (1992), winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award; A Change of Climate (1994); An Experiment in Love (1995), winner of the 1996 Hawthornden Prize. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), was the MIND Book of the Year.
Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s.
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Wolf Hall
Fourth Estate
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Winner, David Cohen Prize
England in the 1540s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the petulant king's freedom destroys his advisor, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum and a deadlock.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a bully and a charmer, Cromwell has broken all the rules of a rigid society in his rise to power, and is prepared to break some more. Rising from the ashes of personal disaster - the loss of his young family and of Wolsey, his beloved patron - he picks his way deftly through a court where 'man is wolf to man.' Pitting himself against parliament, the political establishment and the papacy, he is prepared to reshape England to his own and Henry's desires.Publisher: Fourth Estate
Hilary MantelHilary Mantel
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK’s best known authors. Her books include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988); Fludd (1989) winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize; A Place of Greater Safety (1992), winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award; A Change of Climate (1994); An Experiment in Love (1995), winner of the 1996 Hawthornden Prize. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), was the MIND Book of the Year.
Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s.
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Bring Up the Bodies
Fourth Estate
Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel
Winner, David Cohen Prize
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 With this historic win for Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel becomes the first British author and the first woman to be awarded two Man Booker Prizes, as well as being the first to win with two consecutive novels. Continuing what began in the Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, we return to the court of Henry VIII, to witness the irresistible rise of Thomas Cromwell as he contrives the destruction of Anne Boleyn. By 1535 Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn. But the split from the Catholic Church has left England dangerously isolated, and Anne has failed to give the king an heir. Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Negotiating the politics of the court, Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne's final days. An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists.
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Hilary MantelHilary Mantel
Since winning her first Man Booker Prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall Mantel has become one of the UK’s best known authors. Her books include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988); Fludd (1989) winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize; A Place of Greater Safety (1992), winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award; A Change of Climate (1994); An Experiment in Love (1995), winner of the 1996 Hawthornden Prize. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), was the MIND Book of the Year.
Beyond Black (2005), was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Wolf Hall (2009), was winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), her most recent novel, was winner of the Man Booker Prize, and Costa Book of the year 2012.
Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s.
Judges
The winner of the David Cohen Prize is selected by a panel of judges comprised of authors, literary critics and academics. This year's judging panel includes:
- Shirley Crew, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Leeds
- Award-winning novelist Sarah Hall
- Kathleen Jamie, writer, poet and Professor of Creative Writing at Stirling University
- Writer and critic Sam Leith
- Broadcaster, critic and biographer Fiona MacCarthy, OBE
- Award-winning poet and critic, Daljit Nagra
- Kate Summerscale, award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, and judge of numerous literary prizes
- Screenwriter and dramatist, Roy Williams
Mark Lawson, Chair of Judges said:
'In 2011, when Julian Barnes won the David Cohen Prize before going on to take the Man Booker, it was further confirmation of the Cohen's knack of highlighting the writers who really matter. Three previous winners of the DCP went on to claim the Nobel Prize for Literature and I think the David Cohen Prize can properly be seen as a sort of Nobel for UK and Irish writers. I am delighted to be chairing for a second time an award of such distinction and, in the early stages of the 2013 judging, have been excited to see new candidates emerging to challenge those who ran close last time.'
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Shirley ChewAcademicShirley Chew is Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Leeds, and currently Visiting Professor at the Division of English, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She has published widely in the field of literatures from Commonwealth countries with recent articles on Rudyard Kipling (2010), Michael Ondaatje (2010), Olive Senior (2011), and Wole Soyinka (2012). She has co-edited Unbecoming Daughters of the Empire (1993), Translating Life: Studies in Transpositional Aesthetics (1999), Re-constructing the Book: Literary Texts in Transmission (2001), and the Blackwell Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature (2010). She is the founding editor of Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings.
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Sarah HallAuthorSarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the author of four novels, Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army and How to Paint a Dead Man, and a collection of stories, The Beautiful Indifference. She is the winner of, amongst others, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Betty Trask award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Portico Prize for Fiction. The Electric Michelangelo (2005) was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
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Kathleen JamiePoetKathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. Her poetry collections to date include The Tree House (Picador 2004), which won both the Forward prize, and the Scottish Book of the Year Award; Jizzen (Picador 1999), which won the Geoffey Faber Memorial Award and Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Griffin Prize. Her first non-fiction, The Golden Peak; an account of her travels in rural Pakistan, was re-published by Sort of Books as Among Muslims in 2005. It was described as 'utterly luminous' (The Independent) and 'one of the most powerful accounts by a contemporary Western writer' (TLS). Her subsequent collection of prose essays, Findings (Sort of Books 2006) is considered a landmark in nature writing. Her next book will be Sightlines, the highly anticipated sequel to Findings. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Stirling University and lives with her family in Fife.
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Mark LawsonBroadcaster, journalistMark Lawson, Chair of Judges, is a journalist, broadcaster and author.
Since 1998, Mark Lawson has been the main presenter of Radio 4's arts and culture programme Front Row. As a writer for radio and television, his scripts include The Vision Thing, Absolute Power, The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs and What Did I Say? His novels include Idlewild, Going Out Live and Enough is Enough. He is a columnist and feature writer for the Guardian, and was voted Cultural Commentator of the Year in 2010. He was previously television critic and parliamentary sketch writer for The Independent and presented BBC2's weekly arts round up from 1993 to 2005 under the titles Late Review, Review and Newsnight Review.
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Sam LeithAuthor, journalistSam Leith is a freelance writer and critic who contributes regularly to the Guardian, Evening Standard, Spectator, Wall Street Journal Europe and Prospect. His first book, Dead Pets, was published by Canongate in 2005 and his second, Sod's Law, came out from Atlantic in 2009. His first novel, The Coincidence Engine, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2011. It was selected as one of the Waterstone's 11 best first novels of the year and shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman PG Wodehouse Award for comic writing. He has also published a non-fiction book about rhetoric, Are You Talkin' To Me?
He lives in North London with his wife and two children.
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Fiona MacCArthyBroadcaster and criticA well-known broadcaster and critic, Fiona MacCarthy established herself as one of the leading writers of biography in Britain with her widely acclaimed book Eric Gill, published in 1989. Her biography of Byron was described by A N Wilson as 'a flawless triumph' and William Morris won the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Award. She is also the author of Last Curtsey, a memoir of her early life as a debutante.
Fiona is a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Hon. Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2009. She won in the biography category for the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes 2012 for her life of Edward Burne-Jones, The Last Pre-Raphaelite.
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Daljit NagraPoetDaljit Nagra comes from a Punjabi background. He was born and raised in London and then Sheffield. He has won several prestigious prizes for his poetry. In 2004, he won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem with 'Look We Have Coming to Dover!' This was also the title of his first collection, which was published by Faber & Faber in 2007. This won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and The South Bank Show Decibel Award. His second collection, Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!! was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Daljit's poems have been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Review, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry International, Ark, Rialto and The North. He is a regular contributor to BBC radio and has written articles for The Financial Times, the Guardian, The Observer and The Times of India.
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Kate SummerscaleAuthorKate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, a winner of the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. She has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in London.
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Roy WilliamsPlaywrightRoy Williams began writing plays in 1990 and is now arguably one of the country's leading dramatists. In 2000 he was the joint-winner of The George Devine Award and in 2001 he was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. He was awarded the OBE for Services to Drama in 2008.
His plays include Sucker Punch (Royal Court Theatre, nominated for Olivier Award for Best Play), Category B (Tricycle Theatre), Angel House (Eclipse Theatre, UK Tour), Days of Significance (RSC), Joe Guy (Tiata Fahodzi), There's Only One Wayne Matthews (Polka Theatre), Baby Girl (NT Connections), Absolute Beginners (Lyric Hammersmith), Little Sweet Thing (Nottingham Playhouse), Slow Time (NT Education), Fallout (Royal Court Theatre), Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads(NT), Clubland (Royal Court Theatre), The Gift (Birmingham Rep/Tricycle Theatre), Local Boy (Hampstead Theatre), Souls (Theatre Centre), Life Off (Royal Court) , Starstruck (Tricycle, Winner of John Whiting Award, Alfred Fagon Award & EMMA Award for Best Play), Josie's Boy (Red Ladder Theatre Co) and The No-Boys Cricket Club (Theatre Royal, Stratford East).
His work for television includes Let it Snow (Endor Productions/Sky), Fallout (Company Pictures/Channel 4, Screen Nation Award for Achievement in Screenwriting), Offside (BBC, Winner of BAFTA Children's Film & TV Award for Best Schools Drama) and Babyfather (BBC).
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