Author says he is ‘overcome with emotion’ after winning £40,000 honour for books including The Line of Beauty and The Swimming-Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst has been awarded the 2025 David Cohen prize for literature, one of the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious literary honours, in recognition of his lifetime’s achievement in fiction.
The prize, worth £40,000, was announced on Tuesday evening in London by the chair of judges Hermione Lee. She described Hollinghurst as “one of the most daring, stylish, witty, humane and influential novelists writing in the English language today”.
Hollinghurst told the Guardian he was “overcome with emotion” on hearing of his win. “It has always, to my mind, been the most significant British literary prize.” The award, often described as the UK and Ireland’s Nobel in literature, is awarded biennially to a writer from either country for their entire body of work.
“It takes account of everything a writer has done, and the writers it has rewarded in the past have been huge inspirations,” he said. “I went nearly 30 years ago to the ceremony to see Muriel Spark receiving the award, and later Harold Pinter – these figures are godlike to me, and it’s extraordinary now to find myself joining that list.” Winning “feels to me like the greatest encouragement to keep going,” he added.
