'Matisse' Author Wins Top Whitbread Prize

Hilary Spurling worked for 15 years on the two-volume biography. (By Alastair Grant -- Associated Press)

LONDON, Jan. 24 -- Biographer Hilary Spurling was the surprise winner Tuesday in Britain's lucrative Whitbread Book Awards.

Spurling, 65, came out on top for "Matisse the Master," the second volume of her biography of the great painter.

The Whitbread's top prize goes to one of the winners of prizes already awarded in five categories -- novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's book. Each category winner receives $8,700, while Spurling also receives the $43,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

Spurling, who was born in Stockport, in northwest England, spent 15 years writing the two-volume work. The Oxford graduate had unprecedented and unrestricted access to voluminous family correspondence and other new material in private archives.

"I hope if Matisse could have known the way the awards went this evening, he could have taken it as a tribute," she said in her acceptance speech.

Earlier bookmakers had touted Ali Smith's "The Accidental" as the likely winner, but her novel and first-novelist Tash Aw's Malaysian-set saga, "The Harmony Silk Factory," were not in the final three.

In the end, Michael Morpurgo, chairman of the judges, said Spurling overcame strong competition from poetry winner Christopher Logue's "Cold Calls," a modern reworking of Homer's "Iliad," and Kate Thompson's children's book "The New Policeman."

"Somehow she managed to paint a picture of a painter that was accessible to people not necessarily familiar with art. It's an extraordinary achievement to write a book of that length, which when you get to the end you are sorry it's finished," Morpurgo said.

British retail and leisure group Whitbread Group PLC announced last year that it would no longer sponsor the prizes, which were founded in 1971 and are open to residents of Britain and the Republic of Ireland. A search is underway for a new backer.