History
Paul Kimmage was the first author to win both the Irish (2011) and International awards (1990).
In 2010, Duncan Hamilton, a winner twice in the previous three years, was again included in the shortlist, although on this occasion, when the award was announced on November 30 in London, the prize was won by Brian Moore, the former England rugby union international, for his autobiography, Beware of the Dog.
The 2011 award was won by the "surprise inclusion" to the shortlist of Engage: The Fall and Rise of Matt Hampson, a biography of quadriplegic Matt Hampson, by 1990 winner Paul Kimmage, despite it not being included on the longlist. The shortlist also included a book on bullfighting, Into The Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight by Alexander Fiske-Harrison, despite journalists including Fiske-Harrison himself arguing that bullfighting was not a sport, leading to the employment of security for the first time at the ceremony at Waterstones of Piccadilly. In the end the prize went to A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke, about Robert Enke who committed suicide, by Ronald Reng.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)