The awards were given both for high literary merit and for works that were enjoyable reading, and their aim was to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they were considered a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize, which also limited winners to literature written in the English language and published in the UK and Ireland.
In 1989, there was controversy when the judges first awarded the Best Novel prize to Alexander Stuart's The War Zone, then withdrew the prize prior to the ceremony amid acrimony among the judges, ultimately awarding it to Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding.
There were five book award categories. These had not been changed since the Poetry Award was introduced in 1985, although the children's category had been termed "children's novel" or "children's book of the year". The categories are:
Each of the five winning writers received £5,000. The prize required a £5,000 fee from publishers if a book was to be shortlisted.
The short story award was established in 2012 with a prize of £3,500 for the first, £1,000 for the second and £500 for the third.[7] The winning story was determined by public vote from a shortlist of six that were selected by a panel of judges. The process was "blind" at both stages for the unpublished entries were anonymous until the conclusion.
In the inaugural year, the six short story finalists were exposed anonymously online while the public vote was underway, two months before the winner was to be announced.
| Year | Award | Notes & Refs |
|---|
| Novel | First novel | Children's book | Poetry | Biography | Short story |
|---|
| 1971 | Gerda Charles
The Destiny Waltz | — | — | Geoffrey Hill
Mercian Hymns | Michael Meyer
Henrik Ibsen | — | |
| 1972 | Susan Hill
The Bird of Night | — | Rumer Godden
The Diddakoi | — | James Pope-Hennessy
Anthony Trollope | — | |
| 1973 | Shiva Naipaul
The Chip-Chip Gatherers | — | Alan Aldridge and William Plomer
The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast | — | John Wilson
CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman | — | |
| 1974 | Iris Murdoch
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine | Claire Tomalin
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft | Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake
How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen
Jill Paton Walsh
The Emperor's Winding Sheet | — | Andrew Boyle
Poor Dear Brendan | — | |
| 1975 | William McIlvanney
Docherty | Ruth Spalding
The Improbable Puritan: A Life of Bulstrode Whitelocke | — | — | Helen Corke
In Our Infancy | — | |
| 1976 | William Trevor
The Children of Dynmouth | — | Penelope Lively
A Stitch in Time | — | Winifred Gerin
Elizabeth Gaskell | — | |
| 1977 | Beryl Bainbridge
Injury Time | — | Shelagh Macdonald
No End to Yesterday | — | Nigel Nicolson
Mary Curzon | — | |
| 1978 | Paul Theroux
Picture Palace | — | Philippa Pearce
The Battle of Bubble & Squeak | — | John Grigg
Lloyd George: The People's Champion | — | |
| 1979 | Jennifer Johnston
The Old Jest | — | Peter Dickinson
Tulku | — | Penelope Mortimer
About Time | — | |
| 1980 | David Lodge
How Far Can You Go | — | Leon Garfield
John Diamond | — | David Newsome
On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson, Diarist | — | |
| 1981 | Maurice Leitch
Silver's City | William Boyd
A Good Man in Africa | Jane Gardam
The Hollow Land | — | Nigel Hamilton
Monty: The Making of a General | — | |
| 1982 | John Wain
Young Shoulders | Bruce Chatwin
On the Black Hill | W. J. Corbett
The Song of Pentecost | — | Edward Crankshaw
Bismark | — | |
| 1983 | William Trevor
Fools of Fortune | John Fuller
Flying to Nowhere | Roald Dahl
The Witches | — | Victoria Glendinning
Vita
Kenneth Rose
King George V | — | |
| 1984 | Christopher Hope
Kruger's Alp | James Buchan
A Parish of Rich Women | Barbara Willard
The Queen of the Pharisees' Children | — | Peter Ackroyd
T. S. Eliot | Diane Rowe
Tomorrow is our Permanent Address | |
| 1985 | Peter Ackroyd
Hawksmoor | Jeanette Winterson
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit | Janni Howker
The Nature of the Beast | Douglas Dunn
Elegies | Ben Pimlott
Hugh Dalton | — | |
| 1986 | Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World | Jim Crace
Continent | Andrew Taylor
The Coal House | Peter Reading
Stet | Richard Mabey
Gilbert White | — | |
| 1987 | Ian McEwan
The Child in Time | Francis Wyndham
The Other Garden | Geraldine McCaughrean
A Little Lower than the Angels | Seamus Heaney
The Haw Lantern | Christopher Nolan
Under the Eye of the Clock | — | |
| 1988 | Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses | Paul Sayer
The Comforts of Madness | Judy Allen
Awaiting Developments | Peter Porter
The Automatic Oracle | A. N. Wilson
Tolstoy | — | |
| 1989 | Lindsay Clarke
The Chymical Wedding | James Hamilton-Paterson
Gerontius | Hugh Scott
Why Weeps the Brogan | Michael Donaghy
Shibboleth | Richard Holmes
Coleridge: Early Visions | — | |
| 1990 | Nicholas Mosley
Hopeful Monsters | Hanif Kureishi
The Buddha of Suburbia | Peter Dickinson
AK | Paul Durcan
Daddy, Daddy | Ann Thwaite
AA Milne – His Life | — | |
| 1991 | Jane Gardam
The Queen of the Tambourine | Gordon Burn
Alma Cogan | Diana Hendry
Harvey Angell | Michael Longley
Gorse Fires | John Richardson
A Life of Picasso | — | |
| 1992 | Alasdair Gray
Poor Things | Jeff Torrington
Swing Hammer Swing | | Gillian Cross
The Great Elephant Chase | Tony Harrison
The Gaze of the Gorgon | Victoria Glendinning
Trollope | — | |
|---|
| 1993 | Joan Brady
Theory of War | Rachel Cusk
Saving Agnes | Anne Fine
Flour Babies | Carol Ann Duffy
Mean Time | Andrew Motion
Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life | — | |
| 1994 | William Trevor
Felicia's Journey | Fred D'Aguiar
The Longest Memory | Geraldine McCaughrean
Gold Dust | James Fenton
Out of Danger | Brenda Maddox
D H Lawrence: The Married Man | — | |
| 1995 | Salman Rushdie
The Moor's Last Sigh | Kate Atkinson
Behind the Scenes at the Museum | Michael Morpurgo
The Wreck of the Zanzibar | Bernard O'Donoghue
Gunpowder | Roy Jenkins
Gladstone | — | |
| 1996 | Beryl Bainbridge
Every Man for Himself | John Lanchester
The Debt to Pleasure | Anne Fine
The Tulip Touch | Seamus Heaney
The Spirit Level | Diarmaid MacCulloch
Thomas Cranmer: A Life | — | |
| 1997 | Jim Crace
Quarantine | Pauline Melville
The Ventriloquist's Tale | Andrew Norriss
Aquila | Ted Hughes
Tales from Ovid | Graham Robb
Victor Hugo | — | |
| 1998 | Justin Cartwright
Leading the Cheers | Giles Foden
The Last King of Scotland | David Almond
Skellig | Ted Hughes
Birthday Letters | Amanda Foreman
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire | — | Posthumous Book of the Year Award |
| 1999 | Rose Tremain
Music and Silence | Tim Lott
White City Blue | J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Seamus Heaney
| David Cairns
Berlioz Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness | — | |
| 2000 | Matthew Kneale
English Passengers | Zadie Smith
White Teeth | Jamila Gavin
Coram Boy | John Burnside
The Asylum Dance | Lorna Sage
Bad Blood – A Memoir | — | |
| 2001 | Patrick Neate
Twelve Bar Blues | Sid Smith
Something Like A House | Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass | Selima Hill
Bunny | Diana Souhami
Selkirk's Island | — | |
| 2002 | Michael Frayn
Spies | Norman Lebrecht
The Song of Names | Hilary McKay
Saffy's Angel | Paul Farley
The Ice Age | Claire Tomalin
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self | — | |
| 2003 | Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | DBC Pierre
Vernon God Little | David Almond
The Fire-Eaters | Don Paterson
Landing Light (poetry collection) | DJ Taylor
Orwell: The Life | — | |
| 2004 | Andrea Levy
Small Island | Susan Fletcher
Eve Green | Geraldine McCaughrean
Not the End of the World | Michael Symmons Roberts
Corpus | John Guy
My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots | — | |
| 2005 | Ali Smith
The Accidental | Tash Aw
The Harmony Silk Factory | Kate Thompson
The New Policeman | Christopher Logue
Cold Calls | Hilary Spurling
Matisse the Master | — | |
| 2006 | William Boyd
Restless | Stef Penney
The Tenderness of Wolves | Linda Newbery
Set in Stone | John Haynes
Letter to Patience | Brian Thompson
Keeping Mum | — | |
| 2007 | A.L. Kennedy
Day | Catherine O'Flynn
What Was Lost | Ann Kelley
The Bower Bird | Jean Sprackland
Tilt | Simon Sebag Montefiore
Young Stalin | — | |
| 2008 | Sebastian Barry
The Secret Scripture | Sadie Jones
The Outcast | Michelle Magorian
Just Henry | Adam Foulds
The Broken Word | Diana Athill
Somewhere Towards the End | — | |
| 2009 | Colm Tóibin
Brooklyn | Raphael Selbourne
Beauty | Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer | Christopher Reid
A Scattering | Graham Farmelo
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius | — | |
| 2010 | Maggie O'Farrell
The Hand That First Held Mine | Kishwar Desai
Witness the Night | Jason Wallace
Out of Shadows | Jo Shapcott
Of Mutability | Edmund de Waal
The Hare with Amber Eyes | — | |
| 2011 | Andrew Miller
Pure | Christie Watson
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away | Moira Young
Blood Red Road | Carol Ann Duffy
The Bees | Matthew Hollis
Now All Roads Lead to FranceThe Last Years of Edward Thomas
| — | |
| 2012 | Hilary Mantel
Bring up the Bodies | Francesca Segal
The Innocents | Sally Gardner
Maggot Moon | Kathleen Jamie
The Overhaul | Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes | Avril Joy
Millie and Bird | [8] |
| 2013 | Kate Atkinson
Life after Life | Nathan Filer
The Shock of the Fall | Chris Riddell
Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse | Michael Symmons Roberts
Drysalter | Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Pike | Angela Readman
The Keeper of the Jackalopes | |
| 2014 | Ali Smith
How to Be Both | Emma Healey
Elizabeth is Missing | Kate Saunders
Five Children on the Western Front | Jonathan Edwards
My Family and Other Superheroes | Helen Macdonald
H is for Hawk | Zoe Gilbert
Fishskin, Hareskin | |
| 2015 | Kate Atkinson
A God in Ruins | Andrew Michael Hurley
The Loney | Frances Hardinge
The Lie Tree | Don Paterson
40 Sonnets | Andrea Wulf
The Invention of Nature | Danny Murphy
Rogey | |
| 2016 | Sebastian Barry
Days Without End | Francis Spufford
Golden Hill | Brian Conaghan
The Bombs That Brought Us Together | Alice Oswald
Falling Awake | Keggie Carew
Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory | Jess Kidd
Dirty Little Fishes | |
| 2017 | Jon McGregor
Reservoir 13 | Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine | Katherine Rundell
The Explorer | Helen Dunmore
Inside the Wave | Rebecca Stott
In the Days of Rain | — | Posthumous Book of the Year Award[9] |
| 2018 | Sally Rooney
Normal People | Stuart Turton
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle | Hilary McKay
The Skylarks' War | J. O. Morgan
Assurances | Bart van Es
The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found | — | [10] |
| 2019 | Jonathan Coe
Middle England | Sara Collins
The Confessions of Frannie Langton | Jasbinder Bilan
Asha & the Spirit Bird | Mary Jean Chan
Flèche | Jack Fairweather
The Volunteer [11] | — | [12] |
| 2020 | Monique Roffey
The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story | Ingrid Persaud
Love After Love | Natasha Farrant
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk | Eavan Boland
The Historians | Lee Lawrence
The Louder I Will Sing | Tessa Sheridan
The Person Who Serves, Serves Again | [13] |
| 2021 | Claire Fuller, Unsettled Ground | Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water | Manjeet Mann, The Crossing | Hannah Lowe, The Kids | John Preston, Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell | — | [14] |
| Year | Novel | First novel | Children's book | Poetry | Biography | Short story | Notes & Refs |
|---|
| "—" not awarded this year |
|
