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Novelist A S Byatt and literary critic John Carey have been crowned winners of Britain’s oldest literary awards, the £10,000 James Tait Black Memorial Prizes.
Byatt was awarded the fiction prize for her Man Booker-shortlisted The Children’s Book (Chatto) at the ceremony on Friday (20th August), while Carey took home the biography prize for his book William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (Faber). Golding himself took home the prize in 1979.
Ian Rankin awarded the prizes at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Also shortlsted were Anita Brookner, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel and Reif Larsen.
The prizes, founded in 1919, are for the best work of fiction and the best biography published during the previous 12 months. They are the only major British book awards judged by scholars and students.
Photograph c Matt Writtle