Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris won this year's £10,000 (US$15,528) Guardian First Book Award.
"Serious
works of art history rarely win populist prizes, and often have trouble
finding publishers at all," said Claire Armitstead, chair of judges and
the Guardian's literary editor. "Yet the response from our
Waterstone's reading groups, as well as from our central panel, showed
that readers of all sorts are willing to engage with demanding books, if
they are well written and beautifully produced."