The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller won the £25,000 (about $34,000) Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The judges said: "A true master craftsman, Andrew Miller has painted big themes on a subtle canvas of tiny detail. With rare and delicate skill, The Land in Winter opens up the lives of Bill and Rita, Eric and Irene in ways that will sing differently to each reader, and sing differently again on each re-reading. With prose as softly dazzling as the snow of the 1962/63 winter in which the novel is set, Andrew Miller takes his richly deserved place amongst the Walter Scott Prize pantheon of great contemporary writers."
Miller noted that the people in his novel "came walking slowly out of a blizzard. I leaned quite heavily into the early married lives of my parents, and some of the people they knew, all of whom are long dead now. One of the few advantages of getting older is that your own past becomes material for an historical novel."