1996 Whitbread Awards
Book of the Year
Children's Book
Winner:
- Anne Fine, The Tulip Touch
Shortlist:
- Russell Hoban, The Trokeville Way
- Geraldine McCaughrean, Plundering Paradise
- Philip Pullman, Clockwork or All Wound Up
First Novel
Winner:
- John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure
Shortlist:
- Seamus Deane, Reading In the Dark
- Georgina Hammick, The Arizona Game
- Mary Morrissy, Mother of Pearl
Novel
Winner:
- Beryl Bainbridge, Every Man for Himself
Shortlist:
- Neil Bartlett, Mr Clive & Mr Page
- J. G. Ballard, Cocaine Nights
- Patrick McGrath, Asylum
- Graham Swift, Last Orders
- Fay Weldon, Worst Fears
Biography
Winners:
- Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life
Shortlist:
- Rosemary Ashton, George Eliot: A Life
- Flora Fraser, The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline
- James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
Poetry
Winners:
- Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level
Shortlist:
- UA Fanthorpe, Safe As Houses
- Alice Oswald, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile
- Christopher Reid, Expanded Universes
- Pauline Stainer, The Wound-dresser’s Dream