Whitbread Prizes

More prizes for British novels: the Whitbread awards were announced. The BBC carried an amusing article on it. The winners are: First Novel, Eve Green by Susan Fletcher; Novel, Small Island by Andrea Levy; Biography, My Heart is my Own,The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, by John Guy; Poetry, Corpus, by Michael Symmons Roberts; and Children's, Not the end of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean. Am I imagining that the U.K. gives more prizes for writing, while the U.S. offers more for performance? If so, what does this reveal about our cultures, if anything?

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