Even if the smart money for the overall Costa Prize is still on Hilary Mantel, who won the novel category for Bring Up the Bodies last week, the fact that a comic book by the husband-and-wife team Mary and Bryan Talbot won the best biography award carried more than a little significance.
Even if the smart money for the overall Costa Prize is still on Hilary Mantel, who won the novel category for Bring Up the Bodies last week, the fact that a comic book by the husband-and-wife team Mary and Bryan Talbot won the best biography award carried more than a little significance.
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Prize marks a steady rise in prestige of the format, says Teddy Jamieson
The couple's graphic memoir Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, which interwove Mary Talbot's life story with that of James Joyce's daughter Lucia, saw off Artemis Cooper's 400-page life of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Kate Hubbard's study of Queen Victoria's servants to become the first comic – or graphic novel, to use the acceptable marketing description – to win a major literary award, much to some commentator's chagrin. Giles Coren in the Spectator, for example, suggested when the shortlists were announced that the judges were just trying to be hip.
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