Robin Robertson wins the tenth Walter Scott Prize

15th June, 2019

Robin Robertson has won the tenth Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, becoming both the first Scot and the first poet to win the £25,000 Prize in its ten year history.  His book The Long Take is written in a combination of verse and prose, echoing the format often used by Sir Walter Scott himself in his long historical narrative poems.

Robertson, who now lives in London but comes from the north east coast of Scotland, set his book in the great American cities in the period following the Second World War.

Accepting his Prize from writer Alexander McCall Smith and the Prize’s sponsor the Duke of Buccleuch at the Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival on Saturday 15thJune, Robin Robertson said that, like Walter Scott, he had started as a poet and then moved into narrative fiction ‘by accident’, as The Long Take started as a poem but became something longer.

The Judges said:

“It’s ten years since the spectacular inauguration of the Walter Scott Prize, with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall our first winner. The Prize was founded both to acknowledge the part historical fiction plays in our literary landscape, and to broaden and deepen the meaning of the term ‘historical fiction’ itself. Since then, many of the finest writers in English have explored historical themes in increasingly original ways, making the task of choosing a winner ever more difficult.

“It seems right that in our tenth anniversary year we should celebrate this originality by awarding the prize to a novel written in compelling narrative verse.The prize is always hard-fought and this year was no exception, but this novel exerted a very particular magnetic force, drawing us back again and again, each time marvelling anew.

The Long Take recounts the inner journey of Canadian veteran Walker as he travels from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco attempting to rebuild his life after living through the horrors of war in Europe. In poetry of the          utmost beauty, Robin Robertson interweaves themes from the great age of black and white films, the destruction of communities as cities destroy the old to build the new, the horrors of McCarthyism and the terrible psychological wounds left by war.

“Robertson shows us things we’d rather not see and asks us to face things we’d rather not face. But with the pulsing narrative drive of classic film noir, the vision of a poet, and the craft of a novelist, The Long Take courageously and magnificently boosts the Walter Scott Prize into its next decade.”

Robertson was joined by Andrew Miller and Samantha Harvey, two of the six other shortlistees, at the Prize ceremony in Melrose. The other shortlisted authors were Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey and Cressida Connolly.

The sell-out audience at the event enjoyed readings by Borders-raised actor Jack Lowden, star of TV adaptations of two previous Walter Scott-winning books, The Prizegiving was preceded by the world premiere of an operetta specially commissioned from writer Alexander McCall Smith to celebrate ten years of the Prize.