Press

Press Release

12/16/2008
Final judging panel announced for 2008 Costa Book of the Year

 

* Actress Rosamund Pike, comedian and actor Alexander Armstrong, journalist, broadcaster and writer Michael Buerk and newscaster and television presenter Andrea Catherwood confirmed as final judges
* Columnist and broadcaster, Matthew Parris to chair
* Writers Lisa Jewell, Pauline McLynn, Roger McGough and Victoria Hislop complete the panel

London, Tuesday 16th December 2008:  Actress Rosamund Pike will be a member of the final judging panel which selects the overall winner of the prestigious 2008 Costa Book of the Year, worth £25,000, it was announced today. 

The Costa Book Awards recognise the most enjoyable books of the last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.

Rosamund joins a panel chaired by columnist and broadcaster, Matthew Parris, which also includes comedian and actor Alexander Armstrong, newscaster and television presenter Andrea Catherwood, and journalist, broadcaster and writer, Michael Buerk, who is also representing the Costa Biography Award category.

The other four category judging panels are represented by authors Pauline McLynn (Novel), Victoria Hislop (Children's Book Award), Roger McGough (Poetry) and Lisa Jewell (First Novel). 

The final judges will meet on Tuesday 27th January 2009, to select the winner of the Costa Book of the Year, which will be announced at an awards ceremony later that evening.

The ceremony will be hosted for the third year in a row by journalist and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, herself a final judge in 2004.

"The Costa Book Awards have an excellent track record of recognising and celebrating some of the very best and most enjoyable books of the last year," said John Derkach, Managing Director at Costa.  "It's never an easy task to single out one Book of the Year which stands out above the rest, but we're delighted to have such a fine panel of strong-minded people to undertake the task this year, all of whom are avid readers and passionate about books." 

Former final judges have included Erin O'Connor, Alex James, Emilia Fox, Michael Morpurgo, Hugh Grant, Ralph Fiennes, Jerry Hall, Ian Hislop, Jonathan Ross, and Kirsty Young.  Recent winners of the Book of the Year include A.L. Kennedy (2007), Stef Penney (2006), Hilary Spurling (2005), Andrea Levy (2004), Mark Haddon (2003), Philip Pullman, Seamus Heaney and the late Ted Hughes.

Costa Competition Winner
For the first time this year the final judging panel also includes a member of the public selected via a competition run in Costa's UK stores and online via costabookawards.com throughout October.

To qualify for entry, entrants were asked to submit a 300-word book review and a 500-word application setting out their suitability for the role. Twelve shortlisted entrants were invited to attend a book review debate presided over by author Joanna Trollope, Chairman of the 2007 final judging panel, from which an overall winner was selected. 

The winner is David Horovitch from Hornsey in London. David's prize is to join the nine other members of the judging panel on Tuesday 27th January to decide the Costa Book of the Year 2008.

For more information on this year's Costa Book Awards, go to www.costabookawards.com.

-ENDS-

For further press information, images or to arrange an interview with a final judge, please contact:

Amanda Johnson
Costa Book Awards Press and Publicity
Telephone: 0207 751 2069 (direct line) or 07715 922180 (mobile)
Email:  amanda@amandajohnsonpr.com


Notes for Editors:

About the Costa Book Awards:
* The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971 to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.
* The total prize fund for the Costa Book Awards stands at £50,000. The award winners from the five
categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book - each receive £5,000.
* The overall Costa Book of the Year is selected from the five category Award winners with the winner receiving a further £25,000. 
* The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel, central London on 27th January, 2009.
* To be eligible for the 2008 awards, books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2007 and 31 October 2008.
* The 2007 winner of the Costa Book of the Year was A L Kennedy for Day (Cape).

About Costa:
* Costa is now officially the largest and fastest growing coffee shop chain in the UK.  It opened its 1000th milestone store in March 2008 in Moscow.
* Costa was founded by Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa in 1971. With 849 stores in the UK and over 300 internationally, Costa has enjoyed a remarkable period of growth since it opened its first store. It now operates in 25 countries.
* Costa Coffee was the first UK coffee shop chain to commit sourcing beans from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. 
* Costa's in-store baristas are all coached in the art of coffee making at the company's unique Costa Coffee Academy based at its own roastery in Lambeth, London.
* Costa has been voted as one of the strongest UK brands by experts and consumers and has been awarded ?Superbrand' status.
* Costa set up a registered charity (no.327489) in 2006 called 'The Costa Foundation' to give something back to the communities within the countries from which Costa sources its coffee beans.
* Costa is part of the Whitbread family of brands.


2008 Costa Book Awards:

Final Judging Panel Biographies

Matthew Parris (Chairman): Columnist and Broadcaster


Born in Johannesburg, Matthew Parris graduated from Clare College, Cambridge, and went on to study International Relations at Yale.  Elected MP for West Derbyshire in 1979, he gave up his seat in 1986 to become Presenter of LWT's Weekend World until 1988.  He was the Parliamentary Sketchwriter for The Times for nearly fourteen years, and remains a columnist for the paper.  He also writes for the Spectator on a regular basis and for other magazines occasionally.  He has written and published many books including his autobiography, Chance Witness, which was published in 2002 and won the Politico's Book of the Year Award.

Matthew is a frequent television and radio broadcaster and has received a number of journalistic awards, including the British Press Awards' Columnist of the Year and the What The Papers Say Columnist of the Year, both three times.  He was also the winner of the 2004 George Orwell Prize.

An inveterate traveller, he has led expeditions to Mount Kilimanjaro, Zaire, the Sahara, Peru and Bolivia, and in 2000 spent four months on the remote sub-Antarctic island of Kerguelen.  He has also competed several times in the London Marathon, holding the parliamentary record at 2 hours 32 minutes.


Alexander Armstrong: Comedian and Actor

Alexander Armstrong is a British comedian, actor and television presenter.  

He studied at Trinity College Cambridge where he was a member of Cambridge Footlights and after which he met Ben Miller, with whom he forged a successful comedy partnership.  After various successful series on Radio 4 and television, Armstrong and Miller went on to forge their separate careers. Alexander went on to appear in such TV shows as Mutual Friends and three series of Life Begins for ITV.  He has regularly appeared on BBC's Have I Got News For You, Channel 4's Best of the Worst and BBC Radio 4's Weak at The Top, as well as numerous adverts for Pimms.  He also took a role in Woody Allen's film Match Point.

He reunited with Miller in 2005 for a one-off charity gig at The Groucho Club, which reignited their partnership and led to their prime-time popular BBC 1 show, Armstrong and Miller.  


Michael Buerk: Journalist, writer and broadcaster (representing the Biography Award category)

Michael Buerk has probably won more international awards for television reporting than any other British journalist most notably for his coverage of the Ethiopian famine for BBC News in 1984/5.

Michael has reported for BBC TV News since 1973, presenting BBC Television's flagship news programme, The Ten O'Clock News, and 999, the peak-time BBC 1 programme about emergencies. He is chairman of the BBC's discussion programme on moral and ethical issues, The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4), and in addition he chairs, presents, reports for, and contributes to, a number of other television and radio programmes, mostly for the BBC.  Michael's autobiography, The Road Taken, was published by Hutchinson in September 2004.


Andrea Catherwood: Broadcaster

Andrea Catherwood is an award-winning broadcaster and television presenter.  Born and raised in Northern Ireland, her broadcasting career began at 16 while still at school, when she joined the BBC in Belfast as a co-presenter of a youth current affairs programme for which she won BBC Northern Ireland's Young Presenter of the Year Award.  Before going to Manchester University to read Law, she presented and co-produced a documentary for BBC Radio 4 about the 18 years of the troubles in Northern Ireland.  After graduating, she joined Ulster TV where she spent three years as a news and features reporter.

For many years, Andrea was one of ITV1's leading newscasters presenting weekday bulletins.  She anchored programmes from Iraq and Washington and throughout the day of the London bombings in July 2005.  She most recently presented ITV1's flagship political programme, The Sunday Edition, interviewing world leaders including President Musharraf, Opposition leader David Cameron as well as other Cabinet Ministers.

Andrea is now a regular contributor to BBC Radio 5 Live and has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and is a travel writer for the Mail on Sunday. She has taken part in BBC's The Weakest Link for charity and featured on BBC Radio 4's 'A Good Read'.


Victoria Hislop: Writer (representing the Children's Book Award category)

Victoria Hislop read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and writes travel features for The Sunday Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday, and Woman & Home. Her first novel, The Island, held the number one slot in The Sunday Times paperback chart for eight consecutive weeks and has sold over one million copies.

Victoria was Newcomer of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007 and also won the Richard and Judy Summer Read competition. The Island has been translated into over twenty languages.  She lives in Sissinghurst, Kent with her husband and their two children. Her latest novel The Return was published in June 2008.


David Horovitch: Costa Competition Winner

David Horovitch entered Costa's competition to find a UK reader to join the final judging panel that decides the Costa Book of the Year after picking up a flier in the Crouch End branch of Costa.  David's review of Edward St Aubyn's trilogy, Some Hope, was shortlisted from hundreds of entries to the competition and secured him a place at a book review debate alongside eleven other shortlisted entrants.  Presided over by author Joanna Trollope, Chairman of the 2007 final judging panel, David was chosen as the overall winner following the debate.

David has always been an avid reader, mostly of fiction and poetry. He is particularly keen on W B Yeats and, about 10 years ago, attended the Yeats Summer School in Sligo.  David was born in West London and went to school at St. Christopher's in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. He trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama in the sixties and has worked as an actor since then.  He is a member of the MCC and a supporter of Chelsea FC.  He is also a keen walker and has completed the Offa's Dyke Walk, a footpath of some 170 miles that marks the boundary between England and Wales.


Lisa Jewell: Author (representing the First Novel Award category)

Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two children. Her first novel, Ralph's Party, was the bestselling debut of 1999. She is also the author of Thirtynothing, One-Hit Wonder, Vince & Joy, A Friend of the Family and 31 Dream Street, all of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers.


Roger McGough CBE: Poet and broadcaster (representing the Poetry Award category)

Award-winning poet, playwright, broadcaster and children's author Roger McGough was born in Liverpool and a member of the pop music/poetry group 'The Scaffold' between 1963 and 1973. He made his name as one of the 'Liverpool Poets' with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten and is a member of the Executive Council of the Poetry Society. He has twice won the Signal Poetry Award and is also the author of a number of plays, including All the Trimmings and The Mouthtrap, which he wrote with Brian Patten. He wrote the lyrics for an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows first staged in Washington, DC, in 1984, transferring to Broadway in 1995 and he has written for and presented programmes on BBC Radio. His film work includes Kurt, Mungo, BP and Me (1984). His Collected Poems, bringing together over forty years of McGough's poetry, was published in 2003, and his live poetry album, Lively, is out on CD.  Roger's autobiography, Said and Done, was published in 2005.


Pauline McLynn: Actress and writer (representing the Novel Award category)

Pauline McLynn is an award-winning actress and writer. She is probably best known for her role as Mrs Doyle in Father Ted. She is also a regular on Channel 4's Bremner, Bird and Fortune and plays Tip in Jennifer Saunder's Jam and Jerusalem for the BBC.


Rosamund Pike: Actress

Rosamund grew up in London, the only daughter of two professional opera singers.  A member of the National Youth Theatre at 16, she went on to read English Literature at Wadham College, Oxford.  

Although she took her first major acting role before graduating from Oxford, her first major step on to the international acting scene was as Miranda Frost, MI6 agent, ice maiden and champion fencer in the James Bond adventure, Die Another Day.  After Bond, Rosamund returned to theatre, as "The Blonde" in award-winning director Terry Johnson's highly-acclaimed Hitchcock Blonde at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Various other film roles beckoned, including Promised Land Hotel and The Libertine for which she won a 2005 British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor/ Actress.  She also appeared as Jane Bennett in the star-studded film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the 2006 London Film Critics Circle Awards.

In 2007 Rosamund again returned to the stage with Gaslight at the Old Vic for the new production of author Patrick Hamilton's Victorian thriller. This year she has filmed a role in An Education opposite Dominic Cooper, Peter Sarsgaard and Emma Thompson and has recently completed filming on The Surrogates opposite Bruce Willis. She will next be seen on stage opposite Dame Judi Dench in Madame De Sade in March 2009.

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