Samuel Johnson Prize 2009

Philip Hoare’s Leviathan won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for the best work of non-fiction. Leviathan details Hoare’s lifelong fascination with whales. The £20,000 prize is the most lucrative award given to a work of non-fiction. Jacob Weisberg, chair of this year’s judging panel, said of Leviathan, ‘The quality of his writing was just so impressive, it is literary, just beautiful. It is a model of a certain kind of writing and I imagine it is a book that will be read for a long time to come.’

The first chapter of Leviathan was extracted in Granta 99. Read ‘Whaling’ now.