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Adam Nicolson has won the 2009 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for his book Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (HarperPress).
He beat Chatto title Pollard by Laura Beatty, which won the Author’s Club First Novel Award, and The Gate of Air by James Buchan (Maclehose Press).
The £10,000 prize is awarded annually to a book of "the highest literary merit—fiction, non-fiction or poetry—best evoking the spirit of a place". The judges were Selina Hastings, Philip Hensher and Peter Porter.
The other shortlisted titles were The Legend of Colton H Bryant by Alexandra Fuller (Simon & Schuster), Selected Poems by Ian McDonald (Macmillan Caribbean) and The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise (Bodley Head).