Costa Book Awards (Defunct)

The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual awards recognising books written in the English language by writers based in the UK and Ireland. The awards ran from 1971 until 2021 and were originally named the Whitbread Book Awards; the name was changed to the Costa Book Awards in 2005 when Costa Coffee took over sponsorship.

The Costa Book Awards had 5 categories, Novel, First Novel, Children’s Book, Biography and Poetry. An overall winner was then selected from the 5 category winners. The awards were given for high literary merit and enjoyable reading. Notable past winners include Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald and The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.

This prize is now sadly defunct with the 2021 awards (awarded in January 2022) being the last awarded. We’ve rounded up overall and category winners from the last ten years below for you to browse.