In the 2008 Richard & Judy Nibbies, Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman was named Children’s Book of the Year. Congratulations to her, and to Charlotte Mendelsohn and Nancy Huston for making the Orange Prize shortlist with When We were Bad and Fault Lines respectively; to Lisa Appignanesi and Orlando Figes, for their inclusion on the Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize longlist for Mad, Bad and Sad and The Whisperers; to Dannie Abse, whose The Presence, about his relationship with his late wife, is on the PEN Memoir of the Year shortlist; and to Becky Jacobs for her Sony Radio Academy Award nomination as producer of the breakthrough internet/podcast books programme Book Slam, featuring the likes of Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Will Self. The fact that Becky is the daughter of this page’s editor makes these congratulations all the more heartfelt.
