Costa and Whitbread Book Award winners

The Costa Book Awards, called the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005, honoured books by authors based in the UK and Ireland. In their final form they had five categories (First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book), and each year one category winner was named Costa Book of the Year; the awards were discontinued in 2022, so the 2021 awards were the last.

This page lists 9 category winners, including H is for Hawk (Costa Book of the Year 2014), Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (First Novel Award 2017) and Skellig (Whitbread Children's Book of the Year 1998).

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Who this page is for

Readers looking for books that won a category of the Costa Book Awards or, before 2006, the Whitbread Book Awards. Each entry gives the year and category, what the book is about and who it may suit. Ages for children's books come from the publisher or our catalogue.

Costa Book of the Year

  • 2014, Costa Book of the Year and Biography Award: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. After her father dies, the author buys and trains a goshawk called Mabel; a memoir about grief, nature and memory, for readers of nature writing and memoir.

Costa category winners

  • 2018, Children's Book Award: The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay. Clarry, her brother Peter and their cousin Rupert live for their summers in Cornwall until the First World War reaches their family; a historical novel for readers aged 9 to 11.
  • 2017, Children's Book Award: The Explorer by Katherine Rundell. After their plane crashes in the Amazon, Fred and three other children must survive in the jungle; an adventure story for readers aged 9 to 11.
  • 2017, First Novel Award: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. A woman who lives a solitary, tightly timetabled life begins to change after one simple act of kindness; contemporary fiction about loneliness and change.
  • 2010, Biography Award: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. The author follows a collection of 264 small wood and ivory carvings, or netsuke, through his family's history from Odessa and Paris to Vienna and Tokyo; for readers of family history and memoir.
  • 2009, Biography Award: The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo. A biography of Paul Dirac, the quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner, drawing on family papers; for readers interested in the history of science.

Whitbread category winners

  • 2000, Children's Book of the Year: Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin. A man who takes babies and money from desperate mothers, promising to deliver the babies to London's Foundling Hospital, murders them instead, and his son rescues one; historical fiction the publisher recommends for readers aged 10 and over.
  • 1998, Children's Book of the Year: Skellig by David Almond. While his baby sister is ill in hospital, Michael finds a strange creature, part owl and part angel, in the garage of his new home; for readers aged 9 to 11.
  • 1992, Novel Award: Poor Things by Alasdair Gray. A scientist in late-Victorian Glasgow brings a drowned woman, Bella, back to life, and the story follows her from Glasgow to Alexandria and Paris; literary fiction for adult readers.

How this list was made

Every book here states in its publisher description that it won a Costa or Whitbread award, and each claim was checked against the published list of winners. Only winners are listed; shortlisted books are not included. The overall Book of the Year for 2000 was a different book: Coram Boy won that year's Children's Book of the Year category.

Selected by Fox & Fable from books in stock. Last updated 30 September 2026.