News

Supermac wins Marsh Biography Prize

25.11.11 | Charlotte Williams

Chatto & Windus has scooped the £5,000 Marsh Biography Prize with its title Supermac: A life of Harold Macmillan by historian Richard Thorpe.

Supermac, published in September 2010, explores the major events of Macmillan's time as prime minister including the Suez Crisis, the Profumo scandal and his Winds of Change speech of 1960, as well as his private life. 

Also shortlisted were Caravaggio, a Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon (Allen Lane), Frances Partridge by Anne Chisholm (W&N), Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock (HarperPress), William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (Faber) and How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell (Chatto & Windus).

Penny Hoare, Thorpe's editor at Chatto said: "I am pleased that this distinguished prize has been awarded in 2011 for a traditional biography. Richard Thorpe is not only an excellent historian and a superb researcher, but an elegant writer who brings humour and understanding to his finely judged and comprehensive studies of 20th-century political figures. Supermac is his masterpiece."

The prize, which is awarded biennially, was presented at a ceremony at the English Speaking Union in central London by Rosemary Hill, winner of the prize in 2009.

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