The James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2010

Hosted by the University of Edinburgh and chaired by Ian Rankin, the event was certainly prestigious. Rankin was as effortlessly endearing as ever, and amusingly brandished a torch in memory of last year's blackout and commencement of the awards' ceremony in darkness!

The £10,000 James Tait Black Memorial prizes for biography and fiction are unique in the sense that they are selected by the English Literature staff and a panel of post-graduate students at the University of Edinburgh.

Discussing the nominees for Biography was Dr Lee Spinks, a senior lecturer of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Spinks' areas of interest include a vast field of literature from the modernist James Joyce to the contemporary poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje.

The nominees for biography were:

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey

William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies by John Carey

Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard

A Different Drummer: The Life of Kenneth MacMillan by Jan Parry

The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey by Robert Morrison

Recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography was John Carey. Dr Spinks described Carey’s work as an exploration of morality, civilization, and the fear of the monster within us. Carey read a wonderful extract from his book on incidents that constituted some of Golding’s earliest memories, but had a considerable effect on the writer he grew up to be, and how he came to view the world.  

Up next to discuss the nominees for fiction was Professor Colin Nicholson, who has taught on the English literature department at Edinburgh University since 1969, and whose interests span both the eighteenth century, as well as Scottish, Canadian and postcolonial topics.

The nominees for fiction were

Strangers by Anita Brookner

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Winner of the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction was A.S. Byatt. Her novel is set during the fin de siècle and leads up to WWI, and is fundamentally about childhood and the grave effects the actions of adults can often have on children. Professor Nicholson commended Byatt for the intellectual sweep of her imagination, the wealth of research gone into writing the novel, and the brilliant characterization where the characters appear to walk off the page.

The event thus ended lightheartedly, with two appreciative recipients, and yet another brandish of the James Tait Black Memorial Torch and a wide, cheeky grin from Rankin.