2022 WSP winner announced!

17th June, 2022

James Robertson has won the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for his novel set in a fictional Scottish glen, News Of The Dead.

The Judges said:

‘After twelve winners set outside the homeland of our prize’s namesake, Sir Walter Scott – from Malaysia and China to the USA, continental Europe, Ireland and England – it felt something of a homecoming to choose a book set in Scotland as our winner. In James Robertson’s masterful News Of The Dead, the fictional glen in which the novel is set frames lives through three different centuries exploring what is true, what we believe to be true and what we’d like to be true.

‘The novel fulfils in abundance the prize’s key criteria of ambition, originality, innovation, enduring appeal and quality of writing and we hope readers will enjoy not just the glen itself with all its ‘dangers and gifts, its capabilities and limitations’, but the cast of characters the author assembles, always with a twinkle in his eye. After the pandemic hiatus, we’re delighted to award James Robertson the Walter Scott Prize at a live event where we can congratulate him in person.’

The prize was announced and presented by the Duke of Buccleuch at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland.

James Robertson said:

‘Scott’s life and work have had an influence on my own writing.  I don’t think of myself as a historical novelist, but as a writer with a deep interest in history and time.  I’m speechless at winning this award.’

News Of The Dead was chosen from a shortlist of four including Andrew Greig’s Rose Nicolson, Amanda Smyth’s Fortune, and Colm Tóibín’s The Magician to win the prize, which rewards  the best fiction set sixty or more years ago.  James was presented with a cheque for £25,000 and an original print of a Borders landscape, taken by the renowned photographer Walter Dalkeith.

The prize’s counterpart for young writers, the Young Walter Scott Prize, was also awarded as part of the Borders Book Festival prize event, and its two young category winners, Leo Wilson and Oliver Dhir, were presented with £500 travel grants and printed anthologies containing their work.

Christine Dwyer Hickey, who won the Walter Scott Prize in 2020 for her novel The Narrow Land, also attended the presentations from Ireland to receive her award, having been unable to do so in person while live events were put on hold by the pandemic.

You can find out more about News Of The Dead in our video interview with James here, and find out more about the shortlist books and authors here.  Congratulations, James!