The Costa Book Awards has made its own history tonight by selecting, according to its press release, an all women shortlist* for the first time. Here are the category winners, each of whom bags £5,000:
1). Mary and Bryan Talbot win the Costa Biography Award for Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, a book that examines two father-daughter relationships: James Joyce and his daughter Lucia, and Mary Talbot’s relationship with her father, who was a James Joyce scholar.
2). Hilary Mantel takes the Costa Novel Award for Bring up the Bodies, the brilliant and demanding Booker winner about which quite enough has been written.
3). Francesca Segal’s The Innocents snaps up the Costa First Novel Award. It is set in a Jewish community in London, and is apparently modelled on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
4). Kathleen Jamie’s The Overhaul secures the poetry prize.
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