Winners presented at Abbotsford
6th November, 2021
2021 Walter Scott Prize winner Hilary Mantel made a poignant return to the Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival – this year held at Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott – to receive her £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for The Mirror and the Light. She takes the prestigious accolade for the second time, having first won the prize 12 years ago, in its inaugural year.
After being announced as the winner live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in June, Saturday 6th November saw Mantel collect her award in person, as part of the Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival’s stellar line-up of live events.
On winning the prize, Mantel said:
“I’m so happy, personally, that The Mirror and the Light has won this recognition. It was certainly the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I know the author isn’t always the best person to judge, but it seems to me to be the strongest of my trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell. It launched the trilogy in fine style when the first volume Wolf Hall won the Walter Scott Prize, and now this rounds off the many years of effort.”
And in discussion on stage with Prize judge James Naughtie, Mantel reflected on her first win with Wolf Hall, in 2010:
“When Wolf Hall came along, I do think it changed things, and changed the game for historical fiction. Now, writers and readers are seeing all the possibilities… taking risks with viewpoint and narrative form.”
As well as the £25,000 prize, Mantel was also presented with a photograph of an iconic Borders landscape, taken by renowned photographer Walter Dalkeith, at the first in-person event the Walter Scott Prize has been able to hold since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is particularly fitting that Mantel should receive her award at Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott himself, in this 250th anniversary year of celebrations to commemorate the life of Scotland’s greatest storyteller.
While visiting the Borders Book Festival, Mantel also presented with their awards three of the four winners of the Young Walter Scott Prizes 2019 and 2020. Coming up on stage to receive their awards and a hug from the author were: Madeleine Friedlein for her story Slaying Holofernes, inspired by the visual artist Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, and Atlas Weyland Eden, whose We Wolves is set 35,000 years ago in the steppe of Central Europe. One of the 2019 category winners, Ide Crawford, whose prize-giving could not go ahead in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, also attended this year to collect her award for her story What Fiore Saw.
Hilary Mantel presented each of the winners with their travel grants of £500 and a signed copy of The Mirror and the Light. All winning and highly commended writers also see their work published in the special Young Walter Scott Prize anthology each year.
The deadline for entries for the Young Walter Scott Prize 2021 has just passed, and this Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival event to celebrate the winners from 2019 and 2020 comes on the back of another successful year for the young writers’ prize, with large numbers of entries being received. The winners of the 2021 Young Walter Scott Prize will be announced early in 2022 and will receive their awards in June 2022 when the Book Festival returns to its usual home of Harmony Garden, Melrose.
Asked for her advice for young writers of historical fiction, Hilary Mantel said:
“Remember facts are never the whole story. Research is not just about names and dates – it’s about imaginative, sensory closeness to the past…For your chosen period, you become a magpie. As you are reading, watching, listening, you pick up anything that glitters. Don’t ask, how does this fit in my story? Just take it home to your nest. Sooner or later, you’ll see why it attracted you.”
The Young Walter Scott Prize was launched in 2015 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, and is named after Sir Walter Scott, who, as a boy sent to live in the Scottish Borders, set about exploring the countryside and listening to the stories of the people he met there. This inspired him to write, and ultimately to become the most celebrated author of his time.
Go to our YWSP homepage to find out more about the competition, workshops and last year’s winning writers.