Winner of 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction announced
Andrew Miller has won the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his novel The Land In Winter, which is set in a remote English community during the long, hard winter of 1962/63.
The Prize's definition of 'historical' is a book set at least 60 years ago, meaning Miller's novel fell just within the criterion.
Shortlisted for the prestigious Prize on two previous occasions, Miller was at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose on Thursday 12th June to receive the award from Matthew Maxwell Scott, the great-great-great-great grandson of Walter Scott and trustee of The Abbotsford Trust, which runs the Prize, alongside Prize founder the Duke of Buccleuch.
The panel of judges, chaired by writer Katie Grant, said: 'A true master craftsman, Andrew Miller has painted big themes on a subtle canvas of tiny detail. With rare and delicate skill, The Land in Winter opens up the lives of Bill and Rita, Eric and Irene in ways that will sing differently to each reader, and sing differently again on each re-reading.
'With prose as softly dazzling as the snow of the 1962/63 winter in which the novel is set, Andrew Miller takes his richly deserved place amongst the Walter Scott Prize pantheon of great contemporary writers.'
Andrew Miller said of his inspiration for the book: 'The people in my novel] … came walking slowly out of a blizzard.
'I leaned quite heavily into the early married lives of my parents, and some of the people they knew, all of whom are long dead now. One of the few advantages of getting older is that your own past becomes material for an historical novel.'
The Walter Scott Prize is one of the UK's major literary awards, with previous winners including Sebastian Barry, Robert Harris, Andrea Levy and Hilary Mantel.
It is open to novels published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth, and set at least 60 years ago to reflect the title of Scott's first historical novel, Waverley, or tis sixty years since.
The judging panel for this year's Prize comprised writer Katie Grant (Chair), art historian James Holloway, children's author Elizabeth Laird, broadcaster James Naughtie, writer and filmmaker Saira Shah and two judges new to this year's panel – previous Young Walter Scott Prize winner Rosi Byard-Jones, and award-winning bookseller Rosamund de la Hey.
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