In what’s considered to be a bit of an upset – at least, in the minds of newspaper reporters and bookies, who’d tipped Ali Smith for the win – Hilary Spurling won the overall Whitbread award tonight for her biography of Henri Matisse, a book that took over 15 years to complete.
According to Dalya Alberge’s blow-by-blow account for the Times, the award winner emerged after a heated debate between the judges (including Margaret Drabble & Emilia Fox) who narrowed it down between Spurling and Kate Thompson’s children’s novel and Christopher Logue’s Cold Calls, the fifth instalment of his contemporary account of the Iliad.
Another judge, Michael Morpugo, said: Mr Morpurgo said: “I’ve never been on a judging panel which was as close. There was no blood on the carpet but it was very heated.” Eventually the judges picked their winner, saying that Spurling “had made us see Matisse in a new light”.