Costa Book Awards
Awarded forEnglish-language books by writers based in the UK and Ireland
CountryUnited Kingdom and Republic of Ireland
Presented byCosta Coffee
Formerly calledWhitbread Book Awards
First awarded1971; 53 years ago (1971)
Last awarded2021; 3 years ago (2021)
Websitecosta.co.uk/costa-book-awards/

The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then a brewery and owner of restaurant chains, it was renamed when Costa Coffee, then a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship.[1][2] The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012.[3] Costa Coffee was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The awards were abruptly terminated in 2022.[4]

The awards were given both for high literary merit and for works that were enjoyable reading, and their aim was to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they were considered a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize, which also limited winners to literature written in the English language and published in the UK and Ireland.

Awards were separated into six categories: Biography, Children's Books, First Novel, Novel, Poetry, and Short Story.

In 1989, there was controversy when the judges first awarded the Best Novel prize to Alexander Stuart's The War Zone, then withdrew the prize prior to the ceremony amid acrimony among the judges, ultimately awarding it to Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding.

History

The 1989 Whitbread Book Award for Best Novel was first awarded to The War Zone by Alexander Stuart.[5] However, juror Jane Gardam felt the book was "repellent" and appealed directly to the Whitbread company, arguing that awarding the prize to Stuart's novel would make them into a "laughing stock".[6] After ten days, and leaking the story to the press, the other two jurors, David Cook and Val Hennessy, were persuaded to change their minds, and Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding won the award instead. Both Cook and Hennessy found the experience so unpleasant they vowed to never sit in an award jury again.[7]

The awards were discontinued in 2022, with the 2021 awards being the last ones made.[4][8] Just one month later, the Blue Peter Book Award was also discontinued; this left only three widely recognized awards for UK children's literature (the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal, and the Kate Greenaway Medal).[9]

Process

There were five book award categories. These had not been changed since the Poetry Award was introduced in 1985, although the children's category had been termed "children's novel" or "children's book of the year".[1][2] The categories are:

Each of the five winning writers received £5,000. The prize required a £5,000 fee from publishers if a book was to be shortlisted.[10]

Short stories

The short story award was established in 2012 with a prize of £3,500 for the first, £1,000 for the second and £500 for the third.[11] The winning story was determined by public vote from a shortlist of six that were selected by a panel of judges. The process was "blind" at both stages for the unpublished entries were anonymous until the conclusion.[3][12]

In the inaugural year, the six short story finalists were exposed anonymously online while the public vote was underway, two months before the winner was to be announced.[12]

Winners

Bold font and blue ribbon (Blue ribbon) distinguish the overall Costa/Whitbread Book of the Year.[1]

For lists that include shortlisted entries (where available), please see:

List of award winners

Year Award Notes & Refs
Novel First novel Children's book Poetry Biography Short story
1971 Gerda Charles
The Destiny Waltz 		— — Geoffrey Hill
Mercian Hymns 		Michael Meyer
Henrik Ibsen 		—
1972 Susan Hill
The Bird of Night 		— Rumer Godden
The Diddakoi 		— James Pope-Hennessy
Anthony Trollope 		—
1973 Shiva Naipaul
The Chip-Chip Gatherers 		— Alan Aldridge and William Plomer
The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast 		— John Wilson
CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 		—
1974 Iris Murdoch
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine 		Claire Tomalin
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft 		Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake
How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen
Jill Paton Walsh
The Emperor's Winding Sheet 		— Andrew Boyle
Poor Dear Brendan 		—
1975 William McIlvanney
Docherty 		Ruth Spalding
The Improbable Puritan: A Life of Bulstrode Whitelocke 		— — Helen Corke
In Our Infancy 		—
1976 William Trevor
The Children of Dynmouth 		— Penelope Lively
A Stitch in Time 		— Winifred Gerin
Elizabeth Gaskell 		—
1977 Beryl Bainbridge
Injury Time 		— Shelagh Macdonald
No End to Yesterday 		— Nigel Nicolson
Mary Curzon 		—
1978 Paul Theroux
Picture Palace 		— Philippa Pearce
The Battle of Bubble & Squeak 		— John Grigg
Lloyd George: The People's Champion 		—
1979 Jennifer Johnston
The Old Jest 		— Peter Dickinson
Tulku 		— Penelope Mortimer
About Time 		—
1980 David Lodge
How Far Can You Go Blue ribbon 		— Leon Garfield
John Diamond 		— David Newsome
On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson, Diarist 		—
1981 Maurice Leitch
Silver's City 		William Boyd
A Good Man in Africa 		Jane Gardam
The Hollow Land 		— Nigel Hamilton
Monty: The Making of a General 		—
1982 John Wain
Young Shoulders 		Bruce Chatwin
On the Black Hill 		W. J. Corbett
The Song of Pentecost 		— Edward Crankshaw
Bismark 		—
1983 William Trevor
Fools of Fortune 		John Fuller
Flying to Nowhere 		Roald Dahl
The Witches 		— Victoria Glendinning
Vita
Kenneth Rose
King George V 		—
1984 Christopher Hope
Kruger's Alp 		James Buchan
A Parish of Rich Women 		Barbara Willard
The Queen of the Pharisees' Children 		— Peter Ackroyd
T. S. Eliot 		Diane Rowe
Tomorrow is our Permanent Address
1985 Peter Ackroyd
Hawksmoor 		Jeanette Winterson
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 		Janni Howker
The Nature of the Beast 		Douglas Dunn
Elegies Blue ribbon 		Ben Pimlott
Hugh Dalton 		—
1986 Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World Blue ribbon 		Jim Crace
Continent 		Andrew Taylor
The Coal House 		Peter Reading
Stet 		Richard Mabey
Gilbert White 		—
1987 Ian McEwan
The Child in Time 		Francis Wyndham
The Other Garden 		Geraldine McCaughrean
A Little Lower than the Angels 		Seamus Heaney
The Haw Lantern 		Christopher Nolan
Under the Eye of the Clock Blue ribbon 		—
1988 Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses 		Paul Sayer
The Comforts of Madness Blue ribbon 		Judy Allen
Awaiting Developments 		Peter Porter
The Automatic Oracle 		A. N. Wilson
Tolstoy 		—
1989 Lindsay Clarke
The Chymical Wedding 		James Hamilton-Paterson
Gerontius 		Hugh Scott
Why Weeps the Brogan 		Michael Donaghy
Shibboleth 		Richard Holmes
Coleridge: Early Visions Blue ribbon 		—
1990 Nicholas Mosley
Hopeful Monsters Blue ribbon 		Hanif Kureishi
The Buddha of Suburbia 		Peter Dickinson
AK 		Paul Durcan
Daddy, Daddy 		Ann Thwaite
AA Milne – His Life 		—
1991 Jane Gardam
The Queen of the Tambourine 		Gordon Burn
Alma Cogan 		Diana Hendry
Harvey Angell 		Michael Longley
Gorse Fires 		John Richardson
A Life of Picasso Blue ribbon 		—
1992 Alasdair Gray
Poor Things 		Jeff Torrington
Swing Hammer Swing! Blue ribbon 		Gillian Cross
The Great Elephant Chase 		Tony Harrison
The Gaze of the Gorgon 		Victoria Glendinning
Trollope 		—
1993 Joan Brady
Theory of War Blue ribbon 		Rachel Cusk
Saving Agnes 		Anne Fine
Flour Babies 		Carol Ann Duffy
Mean Time 		Andrew Motion
Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life 		—
1994 William Trevor
Felicia's Journey Blue ribbon 		Fred D'Aguiar
The Longest Memory 		Geraldine McCaughrean
Gold Dust 		James Fenton
Out of Danger 		Brenda Maddox
D H Lawrence: The Married Man 		—
1995 Salman Rushdie
The Moor's Last Sigh 		Kate Atkinson
Behind the Scenes at the Museum Blue ribbon 		Michael Morpurgo
The Wreck of the Zanzibar 		Bernard O'Donoghue
Gunpowder 		Roy Jenkins
Gladstone 		—
1996 Beryl Bainbridge
Every Man for Himself 		John Lanchester
The Debt to Pleasure 		Anne Fine
The Tulip Touch 		Seamus Heaney
The Spirit Level Blue ribbon 		Diarmaid MacCulloch
Thomas Cranmer: A Life 		—
1997 Jim Crace
Quarantine 		Pauline Melville
The Ventriloquist's Tale 		Andrew Norriss
Aquila 		Ted Hughes
Tales from Ovid Blue ribbon 		Graham Robb
Victor Hugo 		—
1998 Justin Cartwright
Leading the Cheers 		Giles Foden
The Last King of Scotland 		David Almond
Skellig 		Ted Hughes
Birthday Letters Blue ribbon 		Amanda Foreman
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire 		— Posthumous Book of the Year Award
1999 Rose Tremain
Music and Silence 		Tim Lott
White City Blue 		J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 		Seamus Heaney
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Blue ribbon 		David Cairns
Berlioz Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness 		—
2000 Matthew Kneale
English Passengers Blue ribbon 		Zadie Smith
White Teeth 		Jamila Gavin
Coram Boy 		John Burnside
The Asylum Dance 		Lorna Sage
Bad Blood – A Memoir 		—
2001 Patrick Neate
Twelve Bar Blues 		Sid Smith
Something Like A House 		Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass Blue ribbon 		Selima Hill
Bunny 		Diana Souhami
Selkirk's Island 		—
2002 Michael Frayn
Spies 		Norman Lebrecht
The Song of Names 		Hilary McKay
Saffy's Angel 		Paul Farley
The Ice Age 		Claire Tomalin
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self Blue ribbon 		—
2003 Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Blue ribbon 		DBC Pierre
Vernon God Little 		David Almond
The Fire-Eaters 		Don Paterson
Landing Light (poetry collection) 		DJ Taylor
Orwell: The Life 		—
2004 Andrea Levy
Small Island Blue ribbon 		Susan Fletcher
Eve Green 		Geraldine McCaughrean
Not the End of the World 		Michael Symmons Roberts
Corpus 		John Guy
My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots 		—
2005 Ali Smith
The Accidental 		Tash Aw
The Harmony Silk Factory 		Kate Thompson
The New Policeman 		Christopher Logue
Cold Calls 		Hilary Spurling
Matisse the Master Blue ribbon 		—
2006 William Boyd
Restless 		Stef Penney
The Tenderness of Wolves Blue ribbon 		Linda Newbery
Set in Stone 		John Haynes
Letter to Patience 		Brian Thompson
Keeping Mum 		—
2007 A.L. Kennedy
Day Blue ribbon 		Catherine O'Flynn
What Was Lost 		Ann Kelley
The Bower Bird 		Jean Sprackland
Tilt 		Simon Sebag Montefiore
Young Stalin 		—
2008 Sebastian Barry
The Secret Scripture Blue ribbon 		Sadie Jones
The Outcast 		Michelle Magorian
Just Henry 		Adam Foulds
The Broken Word 		Diana Athill
Somewhere Towards the End 		—
2009 Colm Tóibin
Brooklyn 		Raphael Selbourne
Beauty 		Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer 		Christopher Reid
A Scattering Blue ribbon 		Graham Farmelo
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius 		—
2010 Maggie O'Farrell
The Hand That First Held Mine 		Kishwar Desai
Witness the Night 		Jason Wallace
Out of Shadows 		Jo Shapcott
Of Mutability Blue ribbon 		Edmund de Waal
The Hare with Amber Eyes 		—
2011 Andrew Miller
Pure Blue ribbon 		Christie Watson
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away 		Moira Young
Blood Red Road 		Carol Ann Duffy
The Bees 		Matthew Hollis
Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas 		—
2012 Hilary Mantel
Bring up the Bodies Blue ribbon 		Francesca Segal
The Innocents 		Sally Gardner
Maggot Moon 		Kathleen Jamie
The Overhaul 		Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes 		Avril Joy
Millie and Bird 		[13]
2013 Kate Atkinson
Life after Life 		Nathan Filer
The Shock of the Fall Blue ribbon 		Chris Riddell
Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse 		Michael Symmons Roberts
Drysalter 		Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Pike 		Angela Readman
The Keeper of the Jackalopes
2014 Ali Smith
How to Be Both 		Emma Healey
Elizabeth is Missing 		Kate Saunders
Five Children on the Western Front 		Jonathan Edwards
My Family and Other Superheroes 		Helen Macdonald
H is for Hawk Blue ribbon 		Zoe Gilbert
Fishskin, Hareskin
2015 Kate Atkinson
A God in Ruins 		Andrew Michael Hurley
The Loney 		Frances Hardinge
The Lie Tree Blue ribbon 		Don Paterson
40 Sonnets 		Andrea Wulf
The Invention of Nature 		Danny Murphy
Rogey
2016 Sebastian Barry
Days Without End Blue ribbon 		Francis Spufford
Golden Hill 		Brian Conaghan
The Bombs That Brought Us Together 		Alice Oswald
Falling Awake 		Keggie Carew
Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory 		Jess Kidd
Dirty Little Fishes
2017 Jon McGregor
Reservoir 13 		Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine 		Katherine Rundell
The Explorer 		Helen Dunmore
Inside the Wave Blue ribbon 		Rebecca Stott
In the Days of Rain 		— Posthumous Book of the Year Award[14]
2018 Sally Rooney
Normal People 		Stuart Turton
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 		Hilary McKay
The Skylarks' War 		J. O. Morgan
Assurances 		Bart van Es
The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found Blue ribbon 		— [15]
2019 Jonathan Coe
Middle England 		Sara Collins
The Confessions of Frannie Langton 		Jasbinder Bilan
Asha & the Spirit Bird 		Mary Jean Chan
Flèche 		Jack Fairweather
The Volunteer Blue ribbon[16] 		— [17]
2020 Monique Roffey
The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love StoryBlue ribbon 		Ingrid Persaud
Love After Love 		Natasha Farrant
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk 		Eavan Boland
The Historians 		Lee Lawrence
The Louder I Will Sing 		Tessa Sheridan
The Person Who Serves, Serves Again 		[18]
2021 Claire Fuller, Unsettled Ground Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water Manjeet Mann, The Crossing Hannah Lowe, The Kids Blue ribbon John Preston, Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell — [19]
Year Novel First novel Children's book Poetry Biography Short story Notes & Refs
"—" not awarded this year

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c (CBA-Past-Winners-2015-Version.pdf) Archived 15 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  2. ^ a b (CBA-Past-Shortlists-2015-Version.pdf) Archived 24 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  3. ^ a b Alison Flood (17 July 2012). "Costa's new short story award to be judged anonymously". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 July 2012.
  4. ^ a b Barnett, David (10 June 2022). "Costa book awards scrapped suddenly after 50 years". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
  5. ^ "The Wrath of Roth". Sun Sentinel. 11 January 2000. Archived from the original on 1 July 2021.
  6. ^ "The War Zone Diary", page 222 of the War Zone, Stuart, Alexander, ISBN 0385249535, Doubleday, 1989
  7. ^ David Streitfeld (10 December 1989). "BOOK REPORT". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.
  8. ^ Armitstead, Claire (23 June 2022). "Shock ending: how the Costa book awards changed reading – and pitted husband against wife". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
  9. ^ "Children's books world reacts to 'horrible loss' of Blue Peter book awards". TheGuardian.com. 6 July 2022.
  10. ^ Danuta Kean (2 January 2017). "On eve of Costa awards, experts warn that top books prizes are harming fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 November 2018. The biggest three prizes, including the Costas, require a £5,000 fee from publishers if a book is shortlisted. This is a contribution towards marketing and should, the organisers claim, be offset by increases in sales.
  11. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 November 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2016.((cite web)): CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  12. ^ a b Alison Flood (28 November 2012). "Costa short story prize to be decided by public vote". Alison Flood. 28 November 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  13. ^ "Costa Short Story Award" Archived 15 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
  14. ^ "Costa Book Awards 2017" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. January 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 January 2018. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  15. ^ "Costa Book Awards 2018: the category award winners are..." BBC. January 2019. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  16. ^ Chandler, Mark (28 January 2020). "Costa Book of the Year won by Fairweather's The Volunteer". The Bookseller. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  17. ^ Doyle, Martin (6 January 2020). "Costa Book Awards 2019 winners revealed". The Irish Times. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  18. ^ "Costa Book of the Year: 'Utterly original' Mermaid of Black Conch wins". BBC. January 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  19. ^ "Costa Book Awards 2021 category winners announced". Costa. Retrieved 5 January 2022.

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