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The winners of the three 2008 RSL Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction open to newly commissioned works in progress have been revealed.
The awards were won by Rachel Hewitt and Matthew Hollis and jointly by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts.
Rachel Hewitt received a cheque for £10,000 for her forthcoming historical biography of the Ordnance Survey, Map of a Nation, due from Granta in 2010.
Matthew Hollis was presented with £5,000 for his study of the poet Edward Thomas, who died at Arras in 1917. Edward Thomas –The Final Years will be published by Faber in 2010.
The third £5,000 prize was split between joint authors – poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley. They each received £2,500 for their study Edgelands – Journeys into England’s Last Wilderness, to be published by Cape in 2011.
Former RSL Jerwood winners’ books now in print include: Matthew Green’s The Wizard of the Nile – The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted (Portobello); Sarah Irving’s Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (Pickering & Chatto); Carolyn Steele’s Hungry City (Chatto) and Thomas Wright’s Oscar’s Books (Chatto).
Books due out this August from previous Jerwood winners include: Roland Chambers’ The Last Englishman – The Double Life of Arthur Ransome (Faber); and Andrew Stott’s The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi – Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian (Canongate).