HAVING ALREADY won the Costa Poetry Prize this month at his third attempt, British poet Christopher Reid went a step further by winning the overall Costa Book of the Year award. His collection, A Scattering, inspired by the death of his wife, was a surprise winner in London last night.
Colm Tóibín had been favourite since winning the Costa Fiction award for Brooklyn, ahead of Man Booker winner, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.
Poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes have been previous winners of the overall prize.
Tóibín had seemed poised for a victory which would have compensated for his failing to make the Man Booker shortlist.
Reid's win was not expected, although in winning the individual prize he had already caused a shock by defeating Ruth Padel's Darwin: A Life in Poems, which seemed a clear favourite not only on merit but as the culmination of a year's celebration of the birth of the pioneering natural scientist.
Science had a strong presence in this year's Costa nominations. Since the category winners were announced on January 5th, support had been steadily growing for debut biographer Graham Farmelo's The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. If ever there was an act of literary retrieval, this was it. Dirac, co-winner of the 1933 Nobel prize for physics, has been acknowledged as the greatest British scientist since Newton and is buried in Westminister Abbey, yet has been forgotten. The unhappy son of a domineering Swiss father who had moved to Bristol, Dirac had a miserable childhood. Physics proved his salvation.
Although Farmelo's book surged ahead of the year's literary biographies including David Nokes's superb study of the life of Samuel Johnson, which had not even been shortlisted, its success was celebrated, not disputed.
The Costa Prize, formerly the Whitbread, has a good track record in rewarding fine biographies. A win for Farmelo would have been a huge endorsement for the prize.
Dirac was born in 1902. The sheltered life of a career academic suited him, as he had autism. Farmelo brings his character to life in a balanced work that looks at the man as well as the physicist.
Dirac applied Einstein's theory of relativity to quantum mechanics in order to explain the behaviour of the electron.
He also developed a quantum theory of radiation.
Reid's intimate, moving collection has a powerfully emotive appeal, but Farmelo's meticulous book amounts to a labour of love. Dirac died in 1982.
His legacy has been revived and his achievements are being rediscovered - thanks to a campaigning biography and the attentions of a literary prize.
TOÍBÍN PRAISE WINNER
Colm Tóibín last night praised winner Christopher Reid, saying he had been “a very successful poet” for years. “He deserves to be read much more than he has been. He is not like Ted Hughes or one of the more famous poets, and he deserves to be.”
Tóibín said he would be back at his desk writing this morning, “the earlier the better”.