Best First Biography Prize

‘I am honoured and delighted . . . ’

‘I am honoured and delighted that A Spy Named Orphan has been chosen for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2018, not least because of the brilliant, fascinating and varied company it keeps on the shortlist.’

‘Thank you to the judges and to the Biographers’ Club . . .’

‘I’m hugely happy to be on the shortlist. Many of the previous winners are books I’m familiar with and love, so it’s exciting to be (sort of) in their company. I can only say “thank you!” to the judges and to the Biographers’ Club.’

‘I’m delighted to be shortlisted . . . ’

‘I’m delighted to be shortlisted by such a distinguished set of judges, and especially for the Biographers Club, who keep our genre thriving despite the pressures exerted by changes in literary fashion, publishing and bookselling.’

‘This was an exceptional shortlist . . .’

‘I had the privilege – alongside the wise and learned Caroline Moorehead and Ian Kelly – of helping judge this year’s Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, which was last night awarded to Edmund Gordon for his superb The Invention of Angela Carter . . . This was an exceptional shortlist, in which every book showed not only thorough knowledge of its subject but deep and sympathetic understanding. And from the Tudor court, to the battlefields of the first world war, from a busy obs/gynae ward on the NHS to the august halls of the National Gallery, from a book-lined study to a Japanese love-hotel, we were thoroughly immersed in the worlds these books inhabit.’

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