After six highly successful years, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize closed in 2024.
Submissions are no longer accepted.
The Paul Torday Memorial Prize was set up and originally sponsored by the family of Paul Torday to celebrate first novels by authors aged 60 or over. Since the prize was founded in 2018, a total of six winners (listed below) have been awarded the prize. Originally a prize fund of £1,000, this was expanded through generous sponsorship from Hawthornden Foundation in 2023, to £3,000 for the winner and an additional £1,000 for a runner-up. Each winner also received a set of Paul Torday’s collected works and runners-up were awarded one specially selected Paul Torday novel with a commemorative book plate. This prize is indebted to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Fiction for their generosity in supplying these books throughout the many years the prize ran.
Looking for a similar prize?
You might be eligible for the McKitterick Prize for a first novel by an author over 40, or see the RSL Christopher Bland Prize for debut novels by authors over 50.
About Paul Torday
Paul Torday (1946-2013) was born in Croxdale, Durham. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle and later attended Pembroke College, Oxford to read English. His first success as a writer came when he was just 16, having won a national poetry competition. After an extensive business career in the engineering, oil and gas industries, Torday published his first novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, aged 60. The book achieved great commercial success and was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. He went on to write ten books throughout his literary career, which include: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007), The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce (2008), The Girl on the Landing (2009), The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers (2010), More Than You Can Say (2011), Breakfast at the Hotel Déjà vu (2011), The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall (2011), Theo (2012), Light Shining in the Forest (2013), and Death of an Owl (2015) – completed by his son, Piers Torday, following Paul’s death in 2013.
Discover more about Paul Torday’s life and literary career through his website here.
As you get into your late fifties, you begin to realise that everybody else is younger and cleverer than you are, so it’s time to move on. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just have one last go. If nobody shows any interest, that’s it.
– Paul Torday
(Sources: Paul Torday Website and The Guardian Article).
A note from Piers Torday about the prize
In 2018 Piers and Nick Torday founded this prize in honour of their father with a ‘message to the industry and the public [which…] is very simple and twofold: it truly is never too late to follow your dream.’
Six years on, Piers Torday reflects on the history of the prize…
‘My brother Nick and I are so glad we followed our dream of honouring Dad’s remarkable literary journey and legacy with the creation of a prize in his name that celebrated those who, like him, forged new literary careers later in life.
Our goal was to reward the very best of those publishing novels at the age of 60 and over, and we can proudly say we have done that for six incredible years. We’ve boosted writers from independent presses and garlanded bestsellers. There is no place for ageism anywhere, and certainly not in publishing, and we’re glad to have highlighted that.
But now our point has been made, our father’s legacy commemorated and we gladly cede the stage to the vital McKitterick and Christopher Bland prizes which will continue to celebrate late developers of many ages!
We would like to thank everyone for their support in making this prize a reality: Paul’s widow Penelope Torday, his agent Mark Stanton at The North Literary Agency, his supremely generous publishers W&N Fiction for their tireless generosity, Hawthornden Foundation for their exceptional support, and of course the Society of Authors without whom none of this would have been possible, from seamless administration to superb award ceremonies.
Most of all, we would like to thank all our brilliant winners and nominees for writing such extraordinary books. We hope you all write many more. (And Dad, we hope you approve too!)’
Hear from previous Paul Torday Memorial Prize winners and judges
I think it’s a huge advantage to be this age and to be writing. I am writing from the engine of youth that I lived, but I am also writing with the wisdom that comes with ageing. […] What better perspective is there than to write about youth culture or life across the generations.
– Jacqueline Crooks, 2024 Paul Torday Memorial Prize winner for Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
It doesn’t really matter what your age is, especially I want to say it doesn’t matter if you’re over sixty. […] I’ve never had anyone in the publishing industry go, “well you’re over 60.” They don’t care as long as you’ve written a good book. […] But you have to treat it seriously and you have to do it with confidence, and you do have to believe in yourself. And those last two are the hardest things. So if you can just give yourself a break and not say “I don’t think this is good enough,” or, you know, “what if no one’s going to like my story?” You need to just shut that- shut it off. You tell yourself the story that you want to read. You write the story you wish you had on a long flight overseas. Just do that. Don’t worry about your age. I don’t care if your 15 or 80. Just write that other story that you want to read.’
– Bonnie Garmus, 2023 Paul Torday Memorial Prize winner for Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday, Penguin Random House)
Age is no barrier to writing a good book, and arguably, as many of the entries have proved, a rich experience of life is actually an advantage […] perhaps the old-ish dogs still have a new trick in them after all!
– Trevor Wood, 2024 Paul Torday Memorial Prize judge
Click to watch our Paul Torday Memorial Prize events
Interested in reading more? Find all the winners, runners-up and shortlisted books from the Paul Torday Memorial Prize over the years via our Bookshop.org link here.
A percentage of each sale will go to the Drusilla Harvey Access Fund, providing access grants to help authors attend events, residencies and retreats.
2024
- Winner: Jacqueline Crooks for Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
- Runner-up: Fran Hill for Cuckoo in the Nest (Legend Press)
- Shortlisted: Justine Gilbert for Daisy Chain (Claret Press)
- Shortlisted: Hilary Taylor for Sea Defences (Eye Books)
- Shortlisted: Michelene Wandor for Orfeo’s Last Act (Greenwich Exchange)
2023
- Winner: Bonnie Garmus for Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday, Penguin Random House)
- Runner-up: Julie Owen Moylan for That Green Eyed Girl (Penguin Random House)
- Shortlisted: Reverend Richard Coles for Murder Before Evensong (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- Shortlisted: Tony Curtis for Darkness in the City of Light (Seren Books)
- Shortlisted: Jonathan Franklin for Red Road Green (Sparsile Books)
2022
- Winner: Jane Fraser for Advent (Honno: Welsh Women’s Press)
- Runner-up: Michael Mallon for The Disciple (Zuleika)
- Shortlisted: Yvonne Bailey-Smith for The Day I Fell Off My Island (Myriad Editions)
- Shortlisted: Anthony English for Death of a Coast Watcher (Monsoon Books)
- Shortlisted: John Fletcher for Wuhan (Head of Zeus)
2021
- Winner: Kathy O’Shaughnessy for In Love with George Eliot (Scribe UK)
- Runner-up: Karen Raney for All the Water in the World (John Murray, Two Roads)
- Shortlisted: Judith Amanthis for Dirt Clean (Victorina Press)
- Shortlisted: Elfan Jones for Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (Unbound)
- Shortlisted: Trevor Wood for The Man on the Street (Quercus)
2020
- Winner: Donald S. Murray for As the Women Lay Dreaming (Saraband)
- Runner-up: Gaby Koppel for Reparation (Honno Press)
- Shortlisted: George Alagiah for The Burning Land (Canongate Books)
- Shortlisted: Euan Cameron for Madeleine (MacLehose Press, Quercus Books)
- Shortlisted: Rosalind Stopps for Hello, My Name is May (HQ, Harper Collins Publishers)
- Shortlisted: Fiona Vigo Marshall for Find me Falling (Fairlight Books)
2019
- Winner: Anne Youngson for Meet Me at the Museum (Doubleday)
- Runner-up: Norma MacMaster for Silence Under a Stone (Doubleday Ireland)
- Shortlisted: Su Bristow for Sealskin (Orenda Books)
- Shortlisted: Sheila Llewellyn for Walking Wounded (Sceptre)
- Shortlisted: Sally Magnusson for The Sealwoman’s Gift (Two Roads)
- Shortlisted: Heather Morris for The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Doubleday)
Paul Torday
Paul Torday (1946 – 2013) was a businessman and author of nine books. His first novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007), was an immediate international bestseller, later made into a film starring Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt. His fiction has been translated into twenty-eight languages and won several awards, including the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. The Paul Torday Memorial Prize was founded by his family in his honour.
Hawthornden Foundation
Hawthornden Foundation is a private charitable foundation supporting contemporary writers and the literary arts. Established by Drue Heinz, the noted philanthropist and patron of the arts, the Foundation is named after Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland, where an international residential fellowship program provides month-long retreats for creative writers from all disciplines to work in peaceful surroundings. In addition, the Foundation sponsors the annual Hawthornden Prize, one of Britain’s oldest and foremost literary awards, and provides grant support to other literary programs.