English PEN Ackerley Prize (1982-2013)

2010-2013 info from PEN/Ackerley Prize accessed 6/27/13
From The Biographers' Club and English PEN accessed 11/04/09

The PEN/Ackerley Prize is given to a literary autobiography of outstanding merit, written by an author of British nationality and published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. Past winners include Alan Bennett, Jenny Diski, Lorna Sage, Blake Morrison, Barry Humphries and Margaret Forster. The judges are the Trustees of the fund left by Nancy Ackerley to honour her brother, the novelist and critic JR Ackerley. The winner receives £2,000.

2013
English PEN is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2013 PEN/Ackerley Prize for Memoir. The shortlisted titles are:

Will Cohu – The Wolf Pit
Rachel Cusk – Aftermath
Colin Grant – Bageye at the Wheel
Richard Holloway – Leaving Alexandria

2012 – Duncan Fallowell for How to Disappear
2011 – Michael Frayn for My Father’s Fortune
2010 – Gabriel Weston for Direct Red

2009
English PEN, the founding centre of the worldwide writers’ association announced the shortlist for the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize:
Julian Barnes - Nothing to be Frightened of
Julia Blackburn - The Three of Us -- Winner!
Susie Boyt - My Judy Garland Life
Ferdinand Mount - Cold Cream
Sathnam Sanghera - The Boy with the Topknot [originally published as If You Don’t Know Me By Now]

2008
The 2008 prize was awarded to Miranda Seymour for her frank account of her family's tangled relationships, In My Father's House, published by Simon & Schuster. Introducing the prize-winning book, Peter Parker, chair of the judges said: 'Miranda Seymour recognises that all family stories can be told from different perspectives and in this book about her own troubled relationship with her father she also allows her mother a voice, a voice that comments throughout on what Seymour is writing, challenging both her memory and her motives in telling this extraordinary story.'

The other short-listed authors in 2008 were:
The Presence by Dannie Abse
Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? by Jane Haynes
The Islamist by Ed Husain
Family Romance by John Lanchester

2007
The twenty-sixth PEN/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography was presented on Wednesday July 18 2007 at the PEN Summer Party to Brian Thompson for his memoir, Keeping Mum.

The other short-listed authors in 2007 were:
Horatio Clare, Running for the Hills
John Cornwell, Seminary Boy
Rupert Everett, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins
Simon Gray, The Year of the Jouncer
Jeremy Harding, Mother Country

2006
The twenty-fifth PEN/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography was presented on Thursday July 13 2006 at the PEN Summer Party to Alan Bennett for his memoir, Untold Stories, which presents the very best of Bennett's writing over the last decade, much of it deeply personal. In his acceptance speech, Bennett said: 'I am very honoured to receive the award, particularly as it comes from fellow practitioners and from such a distinguished organization. While not wishing to mention other literary awards, I must say that the British Book Awards are somewhat nylon, if not crinoline, whereas this award is undoubtedly tweed. I was, when Ackerley died, just starting my literary career. I wonder, if he had been able to write as freely about his life as one can now, whether he would have written the books he did. Maybe his sister had that in the back of her mind when she set up the prize. Anyway, I am very, very grateful. Thank you very much indeed.'

The other short-listed authors in 2006 were:
Nina Bawden, Dear Austen
Xandra Bingley, Bertie, May and Mrs Fish
Neil Cross, Heartland
Anna Swan, Statues without Shadows

Previous Winners:
2005 - Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Half An Arch
2004 - Bryan Magee, Clouds of Glory - A Hoxton Childhood
2003 - Jenny Diski, Stranger on a Train
2002 - Michael Foss, Out of India: a Raj Childhood
2001 - Lorna Sage, Bad Blood
2000 - Mark Frankland, Child of My Time
1999 - Margaret Forster, Precious Lives
1998 - Kathryn Fitzherbert, True to Both Myselves
1997 - Tim Lott, The Scent of Dried Roses
1996 - Eric Lomax, The Railway Man
1995 - Paul Vaughan, Something in Linoleum
1994 - Blake Morrison, When Did You Last See Your Father?
1993 - Barry Humphries, More, Please
1992 - John Osborne, Almost a Gentleman
1991 - Paul Binding, St Martin's Ride
1990 - Germaine Greer, Daddy We Hardly Knew You
1989 - John Healy, The Grass Arena
1988 - Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson & Big God
1987 - Diana Athill, After the Funeral
1986 - Dan Jacobson, Time and Time Again
1985 - Angelica Garnett, Deceived with Kindness
1984 - Richard Cobb, Still Life
1983 - Kathleen Dayus, Her People and Ted Walker, High Path -- joint winners
1982 - Edward Blishen, Shaky Relations

Golden PEN Award
This award is presented to the very greatest of writers - those whose work has given both pleasure to readers and inspiration to their fellow writers. The winner is elected by the Trustees of English PEN, who represent our membership of more than one thousand writers and literary professionals. The winner receives a special golden pen and a cheque for £1,000.
Previous winners include:

2007 - Josephine Pullein-Thompson
2006 - Michael Holroyd
2005 - Jan Morris
2004 - Nina Bawden
2003 - Michael Frayn
2002 - Doris Lessing
2001 - Harold Pinter
2000 - Francis King
1999 - Penelope Fitzgerald
1998 - Muriel Spark
1997 - Iris Murdoch
1996 - William Cooper
1995 - Stephen Spender
1994 - V. S. Pritchett
1993 - Sybille Bedford

Hessell-Tiltman Prize
This prize was created in 2002 with a bequest to the PEN Literary Foundation of £100,000 from English PEN member Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman. Each year the prize goes to a historical work of high literary merit covering any historical period until the end of the second world war. The winner receives £3,000 and is announced annually.
Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the '60s and '70s. On her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name.

2009
Mark Thompson was awarded the 2008/9 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History for The White War: Life & Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 published by Faber & Faber. The 2008 judges were Professor Blair Worden (Chair), Professor Jeremy Catto and Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

The other shortlisted writers were:
Mark Mazower - Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe
Philipp Blom - The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West 1900-1914
Leo Hollis - The Phoenix: St Paul's Cathedral and the Men Who Made Modern London
Frederick Spotts - The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation

2008
Clair Wills was awarded the 2007/8 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History for That Neutral Island published by Faber. The Chair, Anthony Howard, felt he had learnt a great deal from the book and all three judges agreed that it had been an unexpected 'page turner'.

2007
Vic Gatrell was awarded the 2006/7 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History for City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London, published by Atlantic Books. Vic Gatrell said: 'I am delighted that the judges found City of Laughter an accessible book of some literary merit, since I firmly believe that it is the academic historian's obligation to write for more than a couple of hundred people, and to add more than a jargon-laden footnote to our understanding of the past.'

The other shortlisted writers were:
Jerry Brotton - The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection
Deborah Cohen - Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions
William Dalrymple - The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857
J. H. Elliott - Empires of the Atlantic World - Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830
Adam Tooze - The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

2006
Bryan Ward Perkins was awarded the 2006 Hesell-Tiltman Prize for History for The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization

The other shortlisted writers were:
Charles Townshend - Easter1916: The Irish Rebellion
Simon Schama - Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution

2005
Paul Fussell and Richard Overy were jointly awarded the 2005 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. The award went to Paul Fussell for The Boys' Crusade and to Richard Overy for The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia

The other shortlisted writers were:
Joachim Fest - Inside Hitler's Bunker - The Last Days of the Third Reich
Mark Mazower - Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950
Jonathan Phillips - The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople

2004
Tom Holland won the 2004 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History for Rubicon

The other shortlisted writers were:
James Buchan - Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World
Norman Davies - Rising'44: 'The Battle for Warsaw'
Richard Fletcher - The Cross and the Crescent: the dramatic story of the earliest encounters between Christians and Muslims
Diarmaid MacCulloch - Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700

2003
Jenny Uglow won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2003 for The Lunar Men (Faber). The Prize, £3000 plus a silver S.T.Dupont pen, was presented at International Writers' Day 2003 on 7th June at Senate House, University of London.

The other shortlisted writers were:
William Dalrymple - White Mughals - Love and Betrayal in 18th Century India
Geoffrey Moorehouse. The Pilgrimage of Grace:Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII's Throne
Munro Price. Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Baron de Breteuil
A N Wilson - The Victorians

2002
Margaret Macmillan won the inaugural Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History - £3000 plus a silver Dupont Pen - for Peacemakers (John Murray). "Peacemakers is a splendid history of the Versailles Conference, where the glitterers included Queen Marie of Roumania who arrived with a large entourage, a huge wardrobe, and demands for about half of Hungary," said Sir Stephen Tumim, Chair of the Panel of Judges, presenting the prize. Peacemakers also won the 2002 Samuel Johnson Award.

In previous years we were also proud to award the following prizes:

David TK Wong Prize
This prize was awarded biennially by International PEN and aimed to reward excellence in short fiction. The prize was made possible by the extreme generosity of English PEN member David TK Wong.

The James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction
This award was given to an outstanding work of non-fiction, written in English by an author of British nationality, and published in the United Kingdom.

The Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Short Stories
The award was given to an outstanding collection of short stories, written in English by an author of British nationality, and published in the UK in the preceeding year. The award was sponsored by Macmillan and ST Dupont.