Costa Book Awards 1990s: A decade of winners

The 1990s were a transformative decade for British and Irish literature, and the Costa Book Awards—then known as the Whitbread Book Awards before rebranding—captured that creative ferment brilliantly. This was an era when literary fiction seemed to expand in all directions at once: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia announced the arrival of multicultural voices in 1990, while Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh claimed the Novel Award in 1995, and Alasdair Gray’s audaciously experimental Poor Things won just three years earlier. These weren’t safe choices—the Costa awards showed genuine appetite for risk-taking prose, for writers willing to challenge formal conventions and expand what the British novel could be.

What’s striking in retrospect is how the decade elevated overlooked literary forms alongside fiction. Poetry had an extraordinary run, with Seamus Heaney winning twice—once for The Spirit Level in 1996 and again with his boldly modern Beowulf translation in 1999—while Ted Hughes claimed back-to-back victories with Tales from Ovid and Birthday Letters. The Children’s Book category, meanwhile, became a proving ground for enduring talent: David Almond’s Skellig arrived in 1998 with a quiet magic that still resonates, and by 1999, a certain young wizard named Harry Potter was already making his mark on the awards. The Biography shortlists read like a who’s who of ambitious literary non-fiction, from John Richardson’s monumental Picasso study to Andrew Motion’s definitive Larkin.

The full decade of Costa Book Awards winners awaits below, a decade that essentially mapped the landscape of late twentieth-century English-language literature.

1990

Biography

• AA Milne – His Life by Ann Thwaite

Children’s Book

• AK by Peter Dickinson

First Novel

• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Novel

• Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley

Poetry

• Daddy, Daddy by Paul Durcan

1991

Biography

• A Life of Picasso by John Richardson

Children’s Book

• Harvey Angell by Diana Hendry

First Novel

• Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn

Novel

• The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam

Poetry

• Gorse Fires by Michael Longley

1992

Biography

• Trollope by Victoria Glendinning

Children’s Book

• The Great Elephant Chase by Gillian Cross

First Novel

• Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington

Novel

• Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Poetry

• The Gaze of the Gorgon by Tony Harrison

1993

Biography

• Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion

Children’s Book

• Flour Babies by Anne Fine

First Novel

• Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk

Novel

• Theory of War by Joan Brady

Poetry

• Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy

1994

Biography

• D H Lawrence: The Married Man by Brenda Maddox

Children’s Book

• Gold Dust by Geraldine McCaughrean

First Novel

• The Longest Memory by Fred D’Aguiar

Novel

• Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor

Poetry

• Out of Danger by James Fenton

1995

Biography

• Gladstone by Roy Jenkins

Children’s Book

• The Wreck of the Zanzibar by Michael Morpurgo

First Novel

• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Novel

• The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie

Poetry

• Gunpowder by Bernard O’Donoghue

1996

Biography

• Thomas Cranmer: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Children’s Book

• The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine

First Novel

• The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester

Novel

• Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

Poetry

• The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

1997

Biography

• Victor Hugo by Graham Robb

Children’s Book

• Aquila by Andrew Norriss

First Novel

• The Ventriloquist’s Tale by Pauline Melville

Novel

• Quarantine by Jim Crace

Poetry

• Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

1998

Biography

• Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

Children’s Book

• Skellig by David Almond

First Novel

• The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

Novel

• Leading the Cheers by Justin Cartwright

Poetry

• Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

1999

Biography

• Berlioz Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns

Children’s Book

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

First Novel

• White City Blue by Tim Lott

Novel

• Music and Silence by Rose Tremain

Poetry

• Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney