Awards
Costa Biography Award
2009 Shortlist
The Music Room by William Fiennes
Publisher: Picador
Fiennes spent his childhood in a magical place, a moated castle: the perfect environment for a child with a brimming imagination. It is a house alive with history and beauty, but the young boy growing up there is equally in awe of his brother Richard. Eleven years older and a magnetic presence, Richard suffers from a severe form of epilepsy. His energy influences the rhythms of the family and the house's internal life, and his story inspires a journey, interwoven with loving recollection, towards an understanding of the mind. This is a song of home, of an adored brother and of the miracle of consciousness.
William Fiennes is the author of The Snow Geese, which won the 2003 Hawthornden Prize and was shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. He is the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award and was Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He is Director and co-founder of the charity First Story, which supports creativity and literacy in challenging secondary schools. William Fiennes lives in London.
Judges: "A beautifully-written evocation of place, loss and family."
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