Charles Moore beats former home secretary Alan Johnson to prize with Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, volume one
Baroness Thatcher with her biographer, Charles Moore. 'I think she had much more of a sense of humour than people understand,' he says Photo: Caroline Moore
Charles Moore has won the HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize for the first volume of Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography.
He took home the £5,000 prize for his biography of the late former British primer minister at a London ceremony last night, beating a shortlist of authors which included the former home secretary Alan Johnson, who was nominated for his memoir This Boy.
The 2013 runner-up was Harriet Tuckey for Everest: The First Ascent, about Tuckey's father’s role as doctor to the team that first climbed Everest. The other shortlisted authors were Kate Bassett for In Two Minds; Robert Beaken for Cosmo Lang, Archbishop in War; and Crisis and John Smart for Tarantula’s Web.
Judges for the prize – which launched in 2009 and was won last year by Thomas Penn for Winter King – included author Sally Cline and Robert Collins, the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times.
The Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Prize for the best proposal by an uncommissioned, first-time biographer went to Elaine Thornton for her proposal for a life of Amalia Beer, the mother of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. Lady Antonia Fraser won the Biographers’ Club Lifetime Services to Biography Award.
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