Joseph wins RSL Christopher Bland Prize

In the UK, actor and author Paterson Joseph has won the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Christopher Bland Prize for The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (Dialogue), reports the Bookseller.

The award, worth £10,000 (A$18,700), celebrates outstanding achievements for a debut novelist or nonfiction writer first published aged 50 or over.

Joseph’s book, initially a one-man show written and performed by the author in 2018, illuminates the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho, British abolitionist, writer and composer, and the first black man known to cast a vote in England.

‘All my love and much of my life has gone into the creation of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho and my reward has been this accolade,’ said Joseph. ‘Sancho would be pleased, if not a little surprised, that his short life has lent itself to such attention 243 years after his passing. We bring him to life a little more every time we remember him in music, image and word. This novel is my small contribution to that remembrance and I hope it leads to many creative echoes of the life of a great Black Briton.’

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho was chosen as the winner from a shortlist that also included Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday), Susie Alegre’s Freedom to Think (Atlantic Books), Jo Browning Wroe’s A Terrible Kindness (Faber & Faber), Jill Nalder’s Love from the Pink Palace (Wildfire) and Devika Ponnambalam’s I Am Not Your Eve (Bluemoose Books).

Category: International news