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:
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)