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The TLS Ackerley Prize

The TLS Ackerley Prize is awarded each year to a volume of autobiography by a British author. It was founded in 1982 in memory of the writer and editor J.R. Ackerley. Originally endowed by his sister Nancy West,  it is now funded by the royalties received for  Ackerley’s books, and remains the only British prize for autobiography. 

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The judges do not accept submissions by publishers but call in books themselves, and are looking for ones that display the high standards Ackerley himself set in My Dog Tulip and My Father and Myself - enquiring, absolutely candid and, above all, very well written. 

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The judges are the Trustees of J.R. Ackerley Memorial Trust are all themselves writers, currently Ackerley’s biographer, Peter Parker (chair); biographer and critic Claire Harman and the writer and editor Michael Caines. Former judges include the novelist Francis King, the biographer Michael Holroyd, the editor of Ackerley’s letters, Neville Braybrooke, food writer and historian Colin Spencer, the biographer and historian Richard Davenport-Hines and the novelist and short story writer Georgina Hammick. 

Press Release

25 July 2024

For immediate release

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Catherine Taylor wins the TLS AckerleyPrize 2024 

for The Stirrings

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We are delighted to announce that Catherine Taylor has won 

the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024 for The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). The other two shortlisted books were Monique Charlesworth’s Mother Country (Moth Books) and Jeremy Seabrook’s Private Worlds (Pluto Press)

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The TLS Ackerley Prize is the UK’s only literary prize dedicated to memoir and autobiography

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The winner of the prize, now in its 42nd year, was announced at a special event featuring the shortlisted authors in conversation with the Chair of the judges, Peter Parker, at Reference-Point on Thursday 25 July.

 

The Ackerley Prize was established 42 years ago in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley (1896–1967), the author and long-time literary editor of The Listener magazine, and is now awarded in partnership with the Times Literary Supplement. 

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The prize is given annually to a literary autobiography of outstanding merit, written by an author of British nationality, and published in the UK in the previous year.

The TLS Ackerley Prize is judged by biographer and historian Peter Parker (Chair), writer and editor Michael Caines, and writer and critic Claire Harman. The winner receives a cheque for £4,000. 

 

Catherine Taylor, winner of the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024, said:

"I’ve never won anything, actually, so I’m really pleased.  It’s an amazing pedigree,  the Ackerley Prize, and I am   following in the footsteps of Lorna Sage and Blake Morrison, for example, who are two of my favourite writers . I’m not going to say anything else, except that my mother probably wouldn’t have wanted me to write the book, but I think she’d have been – not surprised  that I wrote it, but I know she’d have been proud this evening. Thank you so much."

 

Peter Parker, Chair of the Judges, said:

"Our shortlist this year consisted of three very different, wholly involving, startlingly candid  and beautifully written memoirs. We hope that by drawing attention to these books we will encourage everyone to buy and read all three of them, but the winner of the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024 is Catherine Taylor’s The Stirrings

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The Stirrings is a frank and furious account of the author’s political and sexual awakening, set largely in Sheffield in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period of Britain’s industrial decline, the murders of the Yorkshire Ripper, Greenham Common, the threat of nuclear war and the Miners’ Strike, and against this backdrop Catherine  Taylor describes the break-up of her family, the onset of serious illness, the death of a close friend, and the dangers to which young women are routinely exposed. The past is brilliantly evoked by an accumulation of precise and minutely observed details of  the everyday things that shape adolescent lives– particularly clothes, food, drink and music. Rarely does a book convey so viscerally, unsentimentally and with such dark humour, the exhilarating and terrifying experience of being young.

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The Ackerley Prize was first awarded in 1982. It was established in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley, author of the classic autobiography My Father and Myself  and long-time literary editor of The Listener,  by his sister Nancy West. 

Ackerley’s posthumous royalties continue to provide capital for the prize. The winner receives a cheque for £4,000.

Previous winners have included Frances Stonor Saunders, Claire Wilcox, Alison Light, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Richard Beard, Amy Liptrot, Alice Jolly, Sonali Deraniyagala, Duncan Fallowell, Miranda Seymour, Michael Frayn, Lorna Sage, Alan Bennett, Blake Morrison, Germaine Greer and John Osborne. A full list of past winners and further details about Ackerley’s life and work can be found at www.jrackerley.com.

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For other enquiries please use the contact form or write to ackerleyprize@gmail.com

Winners of the TLS Ackerley Prize

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The Stirrings

Catherine Taylor

Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2024

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Patch Work

Claire Wilcox

Bloomsbury 2021

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The Day That Went Missing

Richard Beard

Harvill Secker 2018

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Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

Henry Marsh

Weidnfeld & Nicolson 2015

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How to Disappear

Duncan Fallowell

Ditto Press 2012

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The Three of Us

Julia Blackburn

Vintage 2009

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Untold Stories

Alan Bennett

Faber & Faber 2006

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Stranger on a Train

Jenny Diski

Virago 2003

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Child of My Time

Mark Frankland

Sinclair-Stevenson 2000

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The Scent of Dried Roses

Tim Lott

Penguin Classics 1997

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And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Blake Morrison

Granta Books 1994

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St Martin's Ride

Paul Binding

Secker & Warburg 1991

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Little Wilson & Big God

Anthony Burgess

Penguin Books Ltd 1988

 

 

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Deceived with Kindness

Angelica Garnett

Harcourt 1985

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High Path

Ted Walker
Joint winner

Routledge & Kegan Paul 1983

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Thunderstone

Nancy Campbell

Elliott & Thompson 2023

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A Radical Romance

Alison Light

Fig Tree 2020

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The Outrun

Amy Liptrot

Canongate 2017

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Wave

Sonali Deraniyagla

Virago 2014

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My Father's Fortune

Michael Frayn

Faber & Faber 2011

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In My Father's House

Miranda Seymour

Simon & Schuster 2008

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Half An Arch

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy

Timewell Press 2005

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Out of India: a Raj Childhood

Michael Foss

Michael O'Mara Books 2002

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Precious Lives

Margaret Forster

Vintge 1999

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The Railway Man

Eric Lomax

Vintage 1996

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More, Please

Barry Humphries

Viking 1993

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Daddy We Hardly Knew You

Germaine Greer

Randon House USA Inc 1990

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After a Funeral

Diana Athill

Hamish Hamilton 1987

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Still Life – Sketches from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood

Richard Cobb

Chatto & Windus 1984

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Shaky Relations

Edward Blishen

David & Charles 1982

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The Suitcase

Frances Stonor Saunders

Jonathan Cape 2022

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The Terrible

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Penguin Books 2019

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Dead Babies and Seaside Towns

Alice Jolly

Unbound 2016

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Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt

Richard Holloway

Canongate Books 2013

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Direct Red

Gabriel Weston

Cape 2010

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Keeping Mum

Brian Thompson

Atlantic Books 2007

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Clouds of Glory-A Hoxton Childhood

Bryan Magee

Jonathan Cape 2004

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Bad Blood

Lorna Sage

4th Estate 2001

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True to Both My Selves

Katrin FitzHerbert

Virago 1998

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Something in Linoleum

Paul Vaughan

Sinclair-Stevenson 1995

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Almost a Gentleman

John Osborne

Faber & Faber 1992

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The Grass Arena

John Healy

Faber & Faber 1989

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Time and Time Again

Dan Jacobson

Flamingo 1986

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Her People

Kathleen Dayus
Joint winner

Virago 1983

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