Spear's Wealth Management Survey

Spear's Book Awards 2011 Winners

The third Spear’s Book Awards, in association with Citi Private Bank, took place today at Massimo at the Corinthia. Winners included Candia McWilliam, Justin Cartwright and Tom Bower and judges included William Sitwell, Petronella Wyatt and Harry Mount.

Authors and celebrity judges from the worlds of literature, finance and society were in attendance as prizes were given out for categories which included some of the most important and influential books of the year.

Guests in attendance included: Manfredi della Gherardesca, art dealer and style icon; actress Georgina Rylance; Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville; author and journalist Justine Picardie; art historian and presenter Dan Cruickshank; author Justin Cartwright; Mark Hedges, editor-in-chief of Country Life; biographer Lady Selina Hastings; biographer and outstanding achievement award-winner Tom Bower; author and icon Peter York; Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman; fashion designer and retailer Leon Max; Spear’s editor-in-chief William Cash; journalist Harry Mount; and acclaimed illustrator Adam Dant.
 
 
WINNERS

CITI PRIVATE BANK FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR
Michael Perino
The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance (Penguin Press)

BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR
Timothy Wu
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Atlantic Books)

BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR
Donald Sturrock
Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl (HarperPress)

FAMILY HISTORY OR MEMOIR OF THE YEAR
Candia McWilliam
What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness (Jonathan Cape)

SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR
Alan Riding
And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (Gerald Duckworth)

LARGE-FORMAT ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF THE YEAR
John Goodall
The English Castle (YUP)

NOVEL OF THE YEAR
Justin Cartwright
Other People’s Money (Bloomsbury)    

SPEAR’S SPECIAL AWARDS IN ASSOCIATION WITH LAURENT PERRIER
For Best First Book
Bill Clegg
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (Jonathan Cape)

For Outstanding Achievement for a body of work
Tom Bower, author of nominated biography of Bernie Ecclestone

For an Outstandingly Produced Book
The David Shepherd Archive Collection (buy it here)

The prizes, custom-made by Prometheus Bound, were copies of the winning books, bound in red lizard-leather, and magnums of Laurent Perrier champagne for the special award winners.

Buy the Spear's Book Awards winners here
 
 
BACKGROUND

The Spear’s Book Awards have distinguished themselves by the quality of the nominated books and by picking the winners of both the Man Booker Prize and the FT/Goldman Sachs Prize. Jeremy Paxman introduced Gillian Tett (author of Fool’s Gold) on Newsnight as the winner of the Spear’s Financial Book of the Year Award.

The multi-award winning Spear’s is regarded as the New Yorker of finance titles and was shortlisted as ‘Magazine of the Year’ last year by the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME). Editor-in-Chief William Cash has twice won Editor of the Year at the Independent Publishers PPA awards for his use of dazzling writers in Spear’s, and Editor Josh Spero was featured among the Observer’s rising stars of the media. Its website, featuring blogs, expert advice and party photos, is spearswms.com.

The glossy magazine has always been a showcase for the sharpest and most entertaining writing, with such talents as Andrew Roberts, Anthony Haden Guest, Martin Vander Weyer, Luke Johnson and Peter York. Spear’s books pages are edited by noted reviewer and Spear’s deputy editor Christopher Silvester.

The lunch is the sister event of the highly successful Spear’s Wealth Management Awards held last year at the Saatchi Gallery. The latter, which was featured on CNBC Europe, has rapidly established itself as the Oscars of financial awards.

Massimo Restaurant and Oyster Bar in the Corinthia Hotel London, the city’s newest grand hotel, provided the perfect setting for this year’s Book Awards lunch. The luxurious redesigned Victorian hotel, located on Whitehall, opened its doors in April this year.  Massimo’s chef patron, Massimo Riccioli, who also owns the iconic La Rosetta restaurant in Rome, offers a refined Mediterranean menu, served in an opulent dining room designed by David Collins.

For more information, please contact Josh Spero, Editor, Spear’s, on 020 7936 6749 or at josh.spero@spearswms.com.  
 
 
SPEAR’S BOOK AWARDS SHORTLIST

Buy the Spear's Book Awards nominees here

CITI PRIVATE BANK FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR
For a non-fiction book that examines a historical incident, person, trend or period of interest in finance to Spear’s readers. 2010 winner: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy (Allen Lane). 2009 winner: Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed.

Barry Eichengreen

Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar (OUP)

Niall Ferguson

High Financier: The Lives and Time of Sigmund Warburg (Allen Lane)

Sebastian Mallaby

More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite (Bloomsbury)

Michael Perino
The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance (Penguin Press)
 
 
BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR
For a non-fiction book that tackles a contemporary economic issue, including but not limited to the credit crisis and recession. 2010 winner: Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Allen Lane). 2009 winner: Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett.

Matthew Lynn
Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis (Wiley)

Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (Penguin Portfolio)

Nicholas Shaxson

Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World (Bodley Head)

Timothy Wu

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Atlantic Books)
 
 
BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR
For a biography or autobiography of an individual of interest to Spear’s readers. They may be from the worlds of business, society, politics, art or others. 2010 winner: Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell (Faber & Faber). 2009 winner: Chagall: Love and Exile by Jackie Wullschlager.

Rosamund Bartlett

Tolstoy: A Russian Life (Profile Books)

Tom Bower
No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone (Faber & Faber)

Jane Brown

The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, 1716-1783 (Chatto and Windus)

Justine Picardie

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life (HarperCollins)

Donald Sturrock

Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl (HarperPress)
 
 
FAMILY HISTORY OR MEMOIR OF THE YEAR
For a book that provides an account of a UK or international family or dynasty of interest to Spear’s readers. 2010 winner: Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles by Robert Sackville-West (Bloomsbury). 2009 winner: Sissinghurst by Adam Nicolson.

Bill Clegg

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (Jonathan Cape)

Deborah Devonshire

Wait For Me!: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister (John Murray)

Martin Gayford

Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait with Lucian Freud (Thames & Hudson)

Candia McWilliam
What To Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness (Jonathan Cape)
 
 
SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR
For an account of a UK or international social or historical period of interest to Spear’s readers. 2010 winner: Cheerful Money: Me, My Family and the Last Days of Wasp Splendour by Tad Friend (Little, Brown).

Dan Cruickshank

The Country House Revealed: A Secret History of the British Ancestral Home (BBC Books)

Ethan Mordden

The Guest List: How Manhattan Defined American Sophistication — From the Algonquin Round Table to Truman Capote’s Ball (Saint Martin’s Press)

Alan Riding

And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (Gerald Duckworth)

Simon Sebag Montefiore
Jersualem: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

John Stubbs

Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War (Viking)
 
 
LARGE-FORMAT ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF THE YEAR
For a large-format image-led book. 2010 winner: Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640 by Mark Girouard (YUP). 2009 winner: The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.

Ferran Adrià

A Day at El Bulli (Phaidon)

Stephen Calloway, Lynn Federle Orr

Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 (V&A)

Thierry Coudert

Café Society: Socialites, Patrons, and Artists: 1920 to 1960 (Flammarion)

John Goodall

The English Castle (YUP)

David Watkin

The Classical Country House (Aurum Press)
 
 
NOVEL OF THE YEAR
For a work of fiction, not necessarily on an economic or financial theme. 2010 winner: Love and Summer by William Trevor (Penguin). 2009 winner: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Justin Cartwright
Other People’s Money (Bloomsbury)

Jonathan Dee

The Privileges (Corsair)

Jonathan Franzen
Freedom (Fourth Estate)

David Miller

Today (Atlantic)

Philip Roth

Nemesis (Jonathan Cape)
 
 
 
SPEAR’S SPECIAL AWARDS IN ASSOCIATION WITH LAURENT PERRIER
For Best First Book. 2010 winner: This Bleeding City by Alex Preston.
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg

For Outstanding Achievement for a body of work. 2010 winner: Selina Hastings.
Tom Bower

For an Outstanding Produced Book deserving of recognition which does not fit into the other categories. 2010 winner: Vincent van Gogh – The Letters. 2009 winner: The Highgrove Florilegium (Addison Publications).
The David Shepherd Archive Collection

Buy the Spear's Book Awards nominees here

All books must have been first published or made available in English between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.

For more information, please contact Josh Spero, Editor, Spear’s, on 020 7936 6749 or at josh.spero@spearswms.com.