Whitbread Award Winner

From Yahoo News:

LONDON - Biographer Hilary Spurling was the surprise winner in Britain's lucrative Whitbread Book Awards Tuesday.

Spurling, 65, came out on top for her book, "Matisse the Master," the second volume of a biography she had written about the great painter.

The Whitbread's top prize goes to one of the winners of prizes already awarded in five categories — novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's book. Each category winner receives $8,700, while Spurling receives the $43,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

Born in Stockport, northwest England, Oxford graduate Spurling spent 15 years writing the two volume work. She had unprecedented and unrestricted access to voluminous family correspondence and other new material in private archives.

A book I really enjoyed was Gladstone by Roy Jenkins, which won the 1995 Whitbread Award for Biography. I have read it three times, and learned something new every time.