Awarded since 1919 this is Scotland's most prestigious and the U.K.'s oldest literary awards. An award is made for fiction and biography.

Does anyone who has read Saturday, the 2005 Fiction winner, have an endorsement or a warning to give? I have heard both positive and negative reviews so far, so it continues to sit on my shelf, unread.

Leave Saturday on the shelf. What a huge disappointment after the brilliant Atonement. Saturday is a prime example of what happens when the editor becomes a sycophant to an author's reputation.

I meant to add that 1990's JTB winner Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd is a cracking read.

I have to agree that Saturday is disappointing. I found it unconvincing and implausible, and abandoned it before the end, which I very rarely do.

I enjoyed it. It got better as it went on. I don't think it is meant to be realistic.

I loved Saturday. To me it was a perfect novel, and plausible too. I adored how McEwan covered the minutiae (physical and emotional) of one day, and created an entire novel from that.

Last twenty years or so of winners...

2005 Ian McEwan
Saturday
2004 David Peace
GB84
2003 Andrew O'Hagan
Personality
2002 Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections
2001 Sid Smith
Something Like a House
2000 Zadie Smith
White Teeth
1999 Timothy Mo
Renegade or Halo2
1998 Beryl Bainbridge
Master Georgie
1997 Andrew Miller
Ingenious Pain 1914
1996 Graham Swift
Last Orders
1996 Alice Thompson
Justine
1995 Christopher Priest
The Prestige
1994 Alan Hollinghurst
The Folding Star
1993 Caryl Phillips
Crossing the River
1992 Rose Tremain
Sacred Country
1991 Ian Sinclair
Downriver
1990 William Boyd
Brazzaville Beach
1989 James Kelman
A Disaffection
1988 Piers Paul Reid
A Season in the West
1987 George Mackay Brown
The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories
1986 Jenny Joseph
Persephone
1985 Robert Edric
Winter Garden (sorry, Touchstones didn't work for the last two titles...no match came up...)

2006 Cormac McCarthy, The Road was awarded August 2007.

The winner for 2007 will be awarded this August (2008)

Winning biographies over the last ten years (the award is given for the best biography and best work of fiction):

2006 Byron Rogers - The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R.S. Thomas
2005 Sue Prideaux - Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream
2004 Jonathan Bate - John Clare: A Biography
2003 Janet Browne - Charles Darwin: Volume 2 - The Power of Place
2002 Jenny Uglow - The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730-1810
2001 Robert Skidelsky - John Maynard Keynes: Volume 3 Fighting For Britain 1937-1946
2000 Martin Amis - Experience
1999 Kathryn Hughes - George Eliot: The Last Victorian
1998 Peter Ackroyd - The Life of Thomas More

Here's the prize homepage.

The shortlists for this year's prizes were announced today.

Biography:
Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love by Sheila Rowbotham
Arthur Miller by Christopher Bigsby
A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd
Gabriel García Márquez: A Life by Gerald Martin
Chagall: A Biography by Jackie Wullschlager

Fiction:
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey
Pilcrow by Adam Mars-Jones
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Guardian has an article about the announcement:

Shortlists announced for James Tait Black Memorial prizes

Message edited by its author, May 14, 2009, 2:35pm.

Out of that list I have read A Mercy and The Secret Scripture and personally preferred the latter.

In the non-fiction pile, I really like the look of the Chagall biography and the Holroyd book. I would love to hear if anyone has read any of the list.

I've only read the Hanif and the Barry, and liked both about the same.

#13

I (and my bookgroup) are reading Sheila Rowbotham's Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love. We haven't discussed it yet, but the email comments have been very enthusiastic. I'm finding it wonderfully written, and Carpenter himself (1844-1929) was such a fascinating man! His interests were broad, but focussed around social justice, and in many of his positions he was about one hundred years before his time. Certainly an historical figure who deserves the close examination that Sheila Rowbotham gives him.

Thanks to toolatedave for making us aware of the award announcement.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is this year's winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The biography winner is A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd. Interestingly, the Guardian notes that Holroyd's wife, Margaret Drabble, won the fiction award 42 years ago for her novel Jerusalem the Golden.

Michael Holroyd wins James Tait Black prize 42 years after his wife