Costa Book Awards

Costa Book Awards
Costa Book Awards
Awarded for	English-language books by writers based in the UK and Ireland
Country	United Kingdom and Ireland
Presented by	Costa Coffee
Formerly called	Whitbread Book Awards
First awarded	1971;53 years ago
Last awarded	2021;3 years ago
Website	costa.co.uk/costa-book-awards/

Last updated September 24, 2024

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 pub-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:

Novel
First novel
Children's book
Poetry
Biography

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 ( ) 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
Year	Novel	First novel	Children's book	Poetry	Biography	Short story	Notes & Refs
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	—	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	Ben Pimlott Hugh Dalton	—
1986	Kazuo Ishiguro An Artist of the Floating World	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	—
1988	Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses	Paul Sayer The Comforts of Madness	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	—
1990	Nicholas Mosley Hopeful Monsters	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	—
1992	Alasdair Gray Poor Things	Jeff Torrington Swing Hammer Swing!	Gillian Cross The Great Elephant Chase	Tony Harrison The Gaze of the Gorgon	Victoria Glendinning Trollope	—
1993	Joan Brady Theory of War	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	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	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	Diarmaid MacCulloch Thomas Cranmer: A Life	—
1997	Jim Crace Quarantine	Pauline Melville The Ventriloquist's Tale	Andrew Norriss Aquila	Ted Hughes Tales from Ovid	Graham Robb Victor Hugo	—
1998	Justin Cartwright Leading the Cheers	Giles Foden The Last King of Scotland	David Almond Skellig	Ted Hughes Birthday Letters	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	David Cairns Berlioz Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness	—
2000	Matthew Kneale English Passengers	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	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	—
2003	Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	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	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	—
2006	William Boyd Restless	Stef Penney The Tenderness of Wolves	Linda Newbery Set in Stone	John Haynes Letter to Patience	Brian Thompson Keeping Mum	—
2007	A.L. Kennedy Day	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	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	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	Edmund de Waal The Hare with Amber Eyes	—
2011	Andrew Miller Pure	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	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	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	Zoe Gilbert Fishskin, Hareskin
2015	Kate Atkinson A God in Ruins	Andrew Michael Hurley The Loney	Frances Hardinge The Lie Tree	Don Paterson 40 Sonnets	Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature	Danny Murphy Rogey
2016	Sebastian Barry Days Without End	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	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	—	^[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 ^[16]	—	^[17]
2020	Monique Roffey The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story	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	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

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References

1 2 3 "CBA Past Winners 2015 Version" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
1 2 "CBA Past Shortlists 2015 Version" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 November 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
1 2 Alison Flood (17 July 2012). "Costa's new short story award to be judged anonymously". The Guardian . Retrieved 17 July 2012.
1 2 Barnett, David (10 June 2022). "Costa book awards scrapped suddenly after 50 years". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
↑ Kelly, Laura (11 January 2000). "The Wrath of Roth". Sun Sentinel. Archived from the original on 1 July 2021.
↑ "The War Zone Diary", page 222 of the War Zone, Stuart, Alexander, ISBN 0385249535, Doubleday, 1989
↑ David Streitfeld (10 December 1989). "Book Report" . The Washington Post . Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409. Archived from the original on 27 August 2017.
↑ 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.
↑ Shaffi, Sarah (6 July 2022). "Children's books world reacts to 'horrible loss' of Blue Peter book awards". TheGuardian.com . Archived from the original on 29 May 2023.
↑ 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.
↑ "The Costa Short Story Award terms and conditions of entry" (PDF). Costa. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 November 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
1 2 Alison Flood (28 November 2012). "Costa short story prize to be decided by public vote". Alison Flood. 28 November 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
↑ "Costa Short Story Award" Archived 15 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine . Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
↑ "Costa Book Awards 2017" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. January 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 January 2018. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
↑ "Costa Book Awards 2018: the category award winners are..." BBC. January 2019. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
↑ Chandler, Mark (28 January 2020). "Costa Book of the Year won by Fairweather's The Volunteer". The Bookseller. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
↑ Doyle, Martin (6 January 2020). "Costa Book Awards 2019 winners revealed". The Irish Times . Retrieved 28 January 2020.
↑ "Costa Book of the Year: 'Utterly original' Mermaid of Black Conch wins". BBC. January 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
↑ "Costa Book Awards 2021 category winners announced". Costa. Retrieved 5 January 2022.

External links

Official website
Costa Book Awards collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Injecting Caffeine Into the Whitbread (Now Costa) Book Awards at The Book Standard

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Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[costa-winners-1] 1 2 3 "CBA Past Winners 2015 Version" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2015.

[costa-shortlists-2] 1 2 "CBA Past Shortlists 2015 Version" (PDF). Costa Book Awards. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 November 2015. Retrieved 12 September 2015.

[flood-3] 1 2 Alison Flood (17 July 2012). "Costa's new short story award to be judged anonymously". The Guardian . Retrieved 17 July 2012.

[barnett-4] 1 2 Barnett, David (10 June 2022). "Costa book awards scrapped suddenly after 50 years". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 March 2023.

[5] Kelly, Laura (11 January 2000). "The Wrath of Roth". Sun Sentinel. 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. Archived from the original on 27 August 2017.

[armitstead-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] Shaffi, Sarah (6 July 2022). "Children's books world reacts to 'horrible loss' of Blue Peter book awards". TheGuardian.com . Archived from the original on 29 May 2023.

[kean-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.

[criteria-11] "The Costa Short Story Award terms and conditions of entry" (PDF). Costa. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 November 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2016.

[flood2-12] 1 2 Alison Flood (28 November 2012). "Costa short story prize to be decided by public vote". Alison Flood. 28 November 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012.

[short-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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