Kneale scrapes in to win Whitbread

MATTHEW KNEALE won the 22,500 Whitbread Book of the Year award for his novel English Passengers - but success came by the narrowest of margins.

The judges wanted to call it a tie with Bad Blood - A Memoir, by Lorna Sage, who died two weeks ago from emphysema. But they were told they had to have an outright winner and panel chairman Sir Tim Rice used his casting vote last night to choose Kneale.

The decision left poet John Burnside's The Asylum Dance out in the cold after a four-year run of poetry winners.

Zadie Smith's White Teeth had been the favourite to win after previously picking up the Whitbread First Novel Prize. But Sir Tim said Kneale and Sage's works emerged as the frontrunners early on.

Sage, a literary critic and academic, wrote about her claustrophobic childhood and her youthful pregnancy.

Kneale's book is a 19th century seafaring odyssey which takes the travellers to Tasmania in search of the Garden of Eden.

Sir Tim added: "It's a remarkable novel which is extremely funny and very tragic. We thought it was well told, brilliantly constructed and had very strong messages."

Collecting his award Kneale said: "This prize means a great deal to me.

Most of all I'd say it gives you a confidence, confidence in an insecure line of work. Writers are worriers. They worry if their books are any good, if anyone will ever like them, if people will continue to like them.

"They get stuck - this novel took me seven years - and then you start worrying if you should have taken that law course while you had the chance."

Last year Kneale, 40, who recently moved from Oxford to Italy, was pipped to the Booker Prize by Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.

The Children's Book of the Year was Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin.

The judges included Olympic gold medallist, rower Matthew Pinsent, broadcaster Penny Smith and crime writer Minette Walters.

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