See what I did there? The point being that Dubliner Sebastian Barry has won the 2008 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Novel Award for (the book I am currently reading, so no spoilers please) The Secret Scripture. Which is great news altogether, and may help make up for what happened with that other unmentionable prize for which he was overlooked this year. Must be particularly aggravating, mind, to have every mention of yesterday’s win coloured with the one-he-didn’t. And for those despairing about the onward march of time without ever disgorging the book they know is in them, a 91-year-old woman by the name of Diana Athill won the prize in the biography category, for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End. More of the other winners and such here.