Living Canon

Costa Book Awards 1997: Complete list of winners

The 1997 Costa Book Awards, formerly known as the Whitbread Book Awards, celebrated a particularly strong year for British and Commonwealth literature, showcasing the remarkable range of talent being recognized across five major categories. This annual prize, which has long been one of the UK’s most prestigious literary honors, brought together an eclectic mix of winners that year: Ted Hughes’ inventive poetry collection Tales from Ovid, Jim Crace’s ambitious novel Quarantine, and Graham Robb’s sweeping biography of Victor Hugo all claimed top honors. What made this vintage year especially noteworthy was how the awards captured both established masters returning to form and exciting new voices—the Costa Award for first novels went to Pauline Melville for her debut The Ventriloquist’s Tale, while Andrew Norriss secured the children’s category with Aquila, a work that would go on to find a devoted audience.

The 1997 Costa Book Award winners reflected a moment when British literature was particularly confident in its reach, both imaginatively and geographically. Hughes’s classical retellings, Crace’s sprawling historical fiction set during the time of Christ, and Robb’s epic French literary biography demonstrated the judges’ appetite for intellectually ambitious work. These winners continue to hold their place in the contemporary literary canon, and the range of genres recognized that year reminds us why the Costa Book Awards—whether you know them by that name or remember them as the Whitbread Awards—remain among the most culturally significant book prizes.

Below, you’ll find the complete list of 1997 Costa Book Award winners across all categories:

Biography

Children’s Book

First Novel

Novel

Poetry