PLAYWRIGHT, poet and novelist Sebastian Barry has become the first double winner of the prestigious £25,000 Walter Scott literature prize.

Irish writer Mr Barry won the eighth Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his epic American novel Days Without End, and it comes after his previous novel On Canaan’s Side was a winner in 2012.

He returned to the Borders Book Festival in Melrose this weekend to receive his prize from the Duke of Buccleuch.

Mr Barry said: "It’s difficult to itemise my simple childish joy at receiving this prize; that the judges did all this work to make a 61 year old man feel 12 again."

The judges, who include Elizabeth Buccleuch, journalists James Naughtie and Kate Figes, writers Katharine Grant and Elizabeth Laird, the Abbotsford Trust’s James Holloway, and historian and Borders Book Festival director Alistair Moffat serving as chair, said: ‘Our decision to award Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End was one of the hardest the Walter Scott Prize has ever had to make.

"With all seven books on the shortlist having strong supporters on the judging panel who championed their cause in a protracted and passionate debate about the nature and purpose of historical fiction, the very books themselves seemed to fight tooth and nail for the accolade.

"Eventually, Days Without End took the lead, for the glorious and unusual story; the seamlessly interwoven period research; and above all for the unfaltering power and authenticity of the narrative voice, a voice no reader is likely to forget."

The Walter Scott prize is Mr Barry’s second book prize double this year - he also won the Costa Book Prize for Days Without End, which describes the relationship between two men during the bloody founding of modern America in the mid-19th century.

The Walter Scott Prize specifically focuses on historical fiction, with the judges looking for originality, innovation and evocation of time and place.

Mr Barry said: "It seems to me that the prize itself has not only boosted and bolstered the historical novel, but also has begun to redefine it."

Previous winners include Hilary Mantel, Andrea Levy, Tan Twan Eng, Robert Harris, John Spurling and Simon Mawer.