Winners of UK’S oldest literary prize unveiled

A novel exploring an unlikely relationship between two actors and a biography that opens a window on the world of fine art have won Britain’s oldest literary awards.

Authors Eimear Mcbride and Laura Cumming join the list of writers who have won the James Tait Black Prizes, which are awarded by the University of Edinburgh.

The winners of the £10,000 prizes were announced by broadcaster Sally Magnusson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last night.

Eimear Mcbride’s winning book in the fiction category traces a love affair between an 18-yearold drama student and an older actor, and is set in mid-nineties-london. The Lesser Bohemians (Faber and Faber) is her second novel. An award-winning writer who grew up in the west of Ireland, Ms Mcbride studied acting at Drama Centre London.

Laura Cumming’s winning entry in the biography prize focuses on the great Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez and a Victorian bookseller, John Snare, who thought he had found a lost painting of the celebrated artist. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez (Chatto and Windus) is Laura Cumming’s first biography. Two prizes are awarded annually by the university – one for the best work of fiction and the other for the best biography.