The late poet Ted Hughes became the only writer to win the Whitbread Book of the Year award twice in its 28-year history when Birthday Letters (Faber) last week scooped the £21,000 ($35,000) prize ahead of Giles Foden's The Last King of Scotland (Faber; Whitbread First Novel winner), Justin Cartwright's Leading the Cheers (Sceptre; Whitbread Novel winner) and Amanda Foreman's much-fancied Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (HarperCollins; Whitbread Biography winner).
A record 438 books were submitted for the prize, which was presented by the chairman of the judges, former U.S. ambassador to Britain Raymond Seitz. Dismissing the idea that Hughes had won for sentimental reasons, Seitz said that quality had been the only criterion. The prize was accepted by Frieda Hughes, artist daughter of Sylvia Plath and Hughes; her artwork appears on the book's jacket.
Birthday Letters recently won the £5000 T.S. Eliot Prize for P try and the £10,000 Forward P try Prize, and has so far sold 150,000 copies in the U.K. and 90,000 in the U.S.
