The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are "Scotland's most prestigious and the U.K.'s oldest literary awards." They are given for biography and fiction and each prize carries an award of £10,000.

The latest winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography is featured below along with a complete list of all past winners of the prize. We also provide a link to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and to our index of all book prizes featured on Happy Dead Trees.

Latest Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography

2006 Winner - The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas by Byron Rogers  (2007 winner will be announced August 2008)

All Previous Winners of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography

1919 - Samuel Butler, Author of Erehwhon (1835-1902) - A Memoir by H. Festing Jones

1920- Lord Grey of The Reform Bill by G.M. Trevelyan

1921 - Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey

1922 - Earlham by Percy Lubbock

1923 - Memoirs, Etc by Sir Ronald Ross

1924 - The House of Airlie by Rev. William Wilson

1925 - The Portrait of Zelide by Geoffrey Scott

1926 - John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church by Rev. Dr. H.B. Workman

1927 - James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M. by H.A.L. Fisher

1928 - Montrose by John Buchan

1929- The Stricken Deer: Or The Life Of Cowper by Lord David Cecil

1930 - Lives of A Bengal Lancer by Francis Yeats Brown

1931- David Hume by J.Y.R. Greig

1932 - The Life Of Mary Kingsley by Stephen Gwynn

1933 - The Book Of Talbot by Violet Clifton

1934 - Queen Elizabeth by J.E. Neale

1935- Thomas Moore by R.W. Chambers

1936 - The Flame In Sunlight: The Life And Work Of Thomas de Quincey by Edward Sackville West

1937 - John Knox by Lord Eustace Percy

1938 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Sir Edmund Chambers

1939 - English Scholars by David C. Douglas

1940 - Spanish Tudor by Hilda F.M. Prescott

1941 - King George V: A Personal Memoir by John Gore

1942 - Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

1943 - Fourscore Years by G. G. Coulton

1944 - William The Silent by C.V. Wedgwood

1945 - Philip Wilson Steer by D.S. MacColl