Seamus Heaney, Equalled Ted Hughes' record
Acclaimed Derry poet, Seamus Heaney, tonight pipped children's hero Harry Potter to win his second Whitbread Book of the Year award. The 60-year-old writer equalled the record of his friend and rival, the late Ted Hughes, after his translation of the Anglo Saxon epic poem Beowulf was named the best book of 1999 at a ceremony in The Brewery, near London's Barbican. Heaney's triumph comes four years after he scooped the same prize for The Spirit Level, and marks the fourth successive time the Book of the Year title has been awarded to poetry.
The Arts Minister, Sile de Valera, said that the award was a further vindication of Seamus Heaney's talent. She also said that it was fitting that at the dawn of a new millennium, an epic of old English literature had been reworked in such a lyrical and accessible way.
