The Costa Book Awards: Every Winner, from Whitbread to the Last Award
For fifty years a coffee chain and, before that, a brewery chose Britain’s book of the year. The Whitbread awards began in 1971, Costa took them over in 2006, and in June 2022 Costa ended them without giving a reason. What set them apart was the last round: a novel, a first novel, a biography, a book of poems and a children’s book competed against each other for one overall prize, and poetry won it nine times.
By Lisanne Swart · 235 category winners, 1971 to 2021 · Ended in 2022 · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 22 September 2026
The last ten Books of the Year · 2012 to 2021
Click a spine to jump to that book below.
Whitbread1971 to 2005
Costa2006 to 2021
EndedJune 2022
The 2021 awards, announced in February 2022, were the last. This page is an archive; the list of winners is complete and will not change.
Quick answer
The Costa Book Awards, called the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, were British book prizes given every year from 1971 to 2021 for books by writers living in the UK or Ireland. There were five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book, and from 1985 one of the five category winners was also named Book of the Year. The last Book of the Year was Hannah Lowe’s poetry collection The Kids, announced in February 2022. Costa ended the awards in June 2022.
Quick facts about the Costa Book Awards
Began
1971, as the Whitbread Book Awards, sponsored by the Whitbread brewery company
Renamed
2006, when Costa Coffee took over the sponsorship
Ended
June 2022; the 2021 awards were the fiftieth and last
Categories
Novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book, with a few changes over the years
Book of the Year
Chosen from the five category winners, every year from 1985 to 2021
Prize money
In the final years £5,000 for each category winner and £30,000 for Book of the Year
Who could enter
Writers living in the UK or Ireland, for books first published there that year
Book of the Year twice
Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Sebastian Barry
By category
Poetry won Book of the Year nine times, biography eight, first novels five and children’s books twice
Last Book of the Year
The Kids by Hannah Lowe, 2021
What is on this page
Ten of the 235 winners have a full entry: the last ten Books of the Year, 2012 to 2021, one for each year, in no particular order. Under each one is a line of plain fact about the book or its author. The list further down has every category winner from 1971 to 2021, and marks the ones that took the overall prize.
The last ten Costa Books of the Year, 2012 to 2021
Oldest first, one for each year. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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2012
NovelTudor England
Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel
The second of Mantel’s novels about Thomas Cromwell covers a few months of 1535 and 1536, when Henry VIII tires of Anne Boleyn and Cromwell builds the case that brings her to the scaffold.
Matthew Homes, nineteen, tells the story of the night his older brother Simon died on a family holiday, and of the schizophrenia that has since taken hold of his own life, in notes, letters and drawings.
Nathan Filer trained and worked as a mental health nurse.
After her father dies, Macdonald buys a young goshawk and trains it, and in the same book reads the life of T. H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, who tried and failed to train a goshawk of his own.
Faith, fourteen, moves with her family to an island where her father, a naturalist, has fled a scandal. After he is found dead she discovers his secret: a plant that bears fruit when it is fed lies.
It was only the second children’s book to be Book of the Year, after Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass.
Thomas McNulty, an Irish boy who survived the Famine, joins the US Army with his companion John Cole and fights in the Indian Wars and the Civil War, and the two of them make a family of their own.
It was Barry’s second Book of the Year, after The Secret Scripture in 2008.
Lien de Jong was a Jewish girl from The Hague who was hidden from the Nazis by van Es’s grandparents in Dordrecht, and later cut off from the family. Van Es goes to find her, and tells her story and theirs.
Bart van Es is a professor of English literature at Oxford.
In 1940 the Polish officer Witold Pilecki let himself be arrested so that he would be sent to Auschwitz, where he set up a resistance network and smuggled out reports on what was happening there.
Jack Fairweather was a war correspondent before he wrote books.
In 1976 American sport fishermen catch a mermaid off a small Caribbean island. She was once a young woman called Aycayia, cursed centuries ago, and a local fisherman, David, takes her in.
Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
All 235 category winners, with the category each one won. From 1985, the winner marked “book of the year” also took the overall prize. The years in red have a full entry above.
2007DayA. L. Kennedy · novel · book of the yearWhat Was LostCatherine O'Flynn · first novelYoung StalinSimon Sebag Montefiore · biographyTiltJean Sprackland · poetryThe Bower BirdAnn Kelley · children’s book
For its first fourteen years the Whitbread gave separate prizes in each category. From 1985 the category winners went on to a final round, and one of them was named Book of the Year. That meant a book of poems could beat a novel, and often did: poetry won the overall prize nine times, including four years in a row, from 1996 to 1999, for Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.
Children’s books were kept out of the final round from 1996 to 1998 and let back in from 1999. That year Heaney’s Beowulf beat J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Two years later Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass became the first children’s book to win.
How it ended
In June 2022 Costa announced that it had taken “the difficult decision to end the Costa Book Awards”, and that the awards held in February 2022 had been the fiftieth and the last. No reason was given.
In 2023 another coffee chain, Caffè Nero, launched its own Nero Book Awards. The first overall winner, in 2024, was Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting.
Frequently asked questions about the Costa Book Awards
What were the Costa Book Awards?
British book prizes given every year from 1971 to 2021 to writers living in the UK or Ireland, in five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book. From 1985 one of the category winners was also named Book of the Year.
What was the Whitbread Prize?
The same prize under its first name. The Whitbread Book Awards were founded in 1971 by the Whitbread brewery company and ran under that name until 2005, in the same five categories. When Costa Coffee took over the sponsorship they became the Costa Book Awards, and they ended in 2022. Every Whitbread winner is in the 1971 to 2005 part of the list on this page.
When did the Whitbread become the Costa Book Awards?
In 2006, when Costa Coffee took over the sponsorship. The awards for 2005 were the last under the Whitbread name — Hilary Spurling’s Matisse the Master was named Whitbread Book of the Year in January 2006 — and the first CostaBook of the Year was Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves, for 2006. Nothing else changed: same five categories, same eligibility, same Book of the Year round.
Who won the Whitbread Book of the Year?
Twenty-one writers, from the first overall winner in 1985, Douglas Dunn’s Elegies, to the last under that name in 2005, Hilary Spurling’s Matisse the Master. Seven were novels, five poetry, five biography, three first novels and one a children’s book — Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001.
Why were they called the Whitbread awards?
They were founded in 1971 by the Whitbread brewery company. Costa Coffee took over the sponsorship in 2006 and gave the awards its name.
Do the Costa Book Awards still exist?
No. Costa ended them in June 2022; the 2021 awards, announced in February 2022, were the last. In 2023 Caffè Nero launched its own book awards.
What was the last Costa Book of the Year?
Hannah Lowe’s The Kids, a collection of sonnets, announced on 1 February 2022.
Who won Book of the Year twice?
Three writers: Seamus Heaney (1996 and 1999), Ted Hughes (1997 and 1998) and Sebastian Barry (2008 and 2016).
Did a children’s book ever win Book of the Year?
Twice: Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001 and Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree in 2015.
How much was the Costa Book of the Year worth?
In the final years £30,000 for Book of the Year and £5,000 for each category winner.
Where do I start with the winners?
With the last ten Books of the Year, which have a full entry on this page. For a prize that is still running, my page on the Baillie Gifford Prize has every winner of the UK’s non-fiction prize.
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