News

Diana Athill (1936) awarded top literary prize

6 January 2009

LMH alumna Diana Athill (1936 English) has won one the UK's most prestigious literary awards.  It was announced yesterday that her candid memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, was voted best biography at the 2009 Costa Book Awards.  Judges described the work as "a perfect memoir of old age".

Athill will compete with the winners of four other categories for the Costa Book of the Year Award, to be presented at a ceremony on 27 January.

This is the second major honour Athill has recieved in the past week. In the 2009 New Year Honours, announced on 31 December, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Athill's literary career has spanned seven decades.  After leaving LMH in 1939, she worked for the BBC before helping Andre Deutsch found his publishing house and taking on the role of editor to some of the most highly-regarded authors of the twentieth-century, including Norman Mailer, John Updike, and Simone de Beauvior. After her retirement from publishing, Athill turned her attention to her own writing. She has published severaly critically acclaimed biographical works, including Make Believe (1993) and Stet (2000).

A recent interview with Athill in The Guardian can be viewed here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/05/diana-athill-memoir-costa-interview