sponsored by bookmakers William Hill. It claims to be "the world's richest sports book prize" at £22,000 (as of 2010). The award is dedicated to rewarding excellence in
and was first awarded in 1989.
Commenting on the prizes prestige, "Although it is a sports book prize, it has the prestige and the commercial clout to lift the winning book out of the sport section", said
who won in 2005. Other sports writing and book prizes include the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing,
, the Jerry Malloy Book Prize, the Seymour Medal, and the SPORTELMonaco Best Illustrated Sports Book.
The same panel of judges is used each year, chaired by John Gaustad, the founder of the Sportspages bookshop on Charing Cross Road, and including broadcaster
. In its early years the prize was presented in the Sportspages bookshop each November; however Sportspages went out of business at the end of 2005 and the prize moved elsewhere.
The first award was held in 1989, when Dan Topolski's book about one of the most controversial University Boat Races was declared the winner.
The status of the award, and of sports books generally, were enhanced greatly in 1992 when
, took first prize. Both
have subsequently been adapted into feature-length motion pictures. In the first 21 years of the award, only two writers,
, in 2007 and 2009, have won the William Hill award more than once. Unsurprisingly, given cricket writers' often literary aspirations and the appetite for books on cricket, by 2010 the summer game had been the subject of the prize-winning book six times in 22 years.
The award has not been without controversy. In 2000, the award went for the first time to a "ghosted" book,
. At the time, some observed the irony of the award going to the American
, a winner twice in the previous three years, was again included in the short-list, although on this occasion, when the award was announced on November 30 in London, the prize was won by Brian Moore, the former England rugby union international, for his autobiography,
.
2011 was another controversial year with a last minute addition to the shortlist of
, despite it not being included on the longlist. The shortlist also included a book on
, despite journalists including Fiske-Harrison himself arguing that bullfighting was not a sport, leading to the employment of security for the first time at the ceremony at Waterstones of
. In the end the prize went to
style="text-align:center; background:DarkSlateBlue; color:gold;"|William Hill Sports Book of the Year
Year |
Title |
Author(s) |
Featured subject |
Featured sport |
| 1989 |
True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny |
Dan Topolski For the stand-up comedian and actor, see Dan AntopolskiDaniel Topolski is an author, former rower and rowing coach, and summariser on BBC television....
& Patrick Robinson |
The Boat Race The event generally known as "The Boat Race" is a rowing race in England between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights each spring on the River Thames in London. It takes place generally on the last Saturday of March or the first...
|
Rowing Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...
|
| 1990 |
Rough Ride: An Insight into Pro Cycling |
Paul Kimmage Paul Kimmage is an award-winning sports journalist who writes for the Sunday Times newspaper in the United Kingdom and is a former professional road bicycle racer.Kimmage was born into a cycling family...
|
Paul Kimmage Paul Kimmage is an award-winning sports journalist who writes for the Sunday Times newspaper in the United Kingdom and is a former professional road bicycle racer.Kimmage was born into a cycling family...
|
CyclingBicycle racing is a competition sport in which various types of bicycles are used. There are several categories of bicycle racing including road bicycle racing, cyclo-cross, mountain bike racing, track cycling, BMX, bike trials, and cycle speedway. Bicycle racing is recognised as an Olympic sport...
|
| 1991 |
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times is an award-winning biography of the boxer Muhammad Ali, written in 1991 by Thomas Hauser. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award in that year....
|
Thomas Hauser Thomas Hauser is an American author.He made his debut as a writer in 1978 with The Execution of Charles Horman; An American Sacrifice. Horman's wife, Joyce and father, Ed Horman cooperated with Hauser on the book describing both the fate of Charles and his family's quest to uncover the truth in...
|
Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
|
BoxingBoxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
|
| 1992 |
Fever Pitch: A Fan's Life |
Nick Hornby Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
|
Nick Hornby Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
|
Football |
| 1993 |
Endless Winter: The Inside Story of the Rugby Revolution |
Stephen Jones Stephen Jones is a Welsh journalist and the rugby union correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times, and has been for over 20 years and has been twice-named Sports Correspondent of the Year by the Sports Journalists' Association.-References:...
|
Rugby football Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
|
Rugby football Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
|
| 1994 |
Football Against the Enemy |
Simon Kuper Simon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective."Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents in 1969, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a lecturer in anthropology at Leiden University. He has also...
|
Football |
Football |
| 1995 |
A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour |
John Feinstein John Feinstein is an American sportswriter, author and sports commentator who wrote the top two best-selling non-fiction sports books in history, A Good Walk Spoiled and A Season on the Brink.-Early life:...
|
PGA Tour The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...
|
GolfGolf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
|
| 1996 |
Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing |
Donald McRae Donald McRae is a South African writer. McRae is noted as the only two-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award with Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing in 1996 and In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens in 2002. His other works include The Great Trials of...
|
BoxingBoxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
|
BoxingBoxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
|
| 1997 |
A Lot of Hard Yakka |
Simon Hughes Simon Peter Hughes is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor, Peter Hughes, and the brother of the historian Bettany Hughes.-Cricket career:...
|
Simon Hughes Simon Peter Hughes is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor, Peter Hughes, and the brother of the historian Bettany Hughes.-Cricket career:...
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
| 1998 |
Angry White Pyjamas: An Oxford Poet Trains with the Tokyo Riot Police Angry White Pyjamas is a book written by Robert Twigger about his time in a one-year intensive program of studying Yoshinkan aikido.-Summary:...
|
Robert Twigger Robert Twigger is a British poet, writer and explorer. He lives in Cairo, Egypt.-Life:Twigger was educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. He first began to study engineering, but after six weeks switched to politics, philosophy and economics. His attendance record was poor, and he left...
|
Robert Twigger Robert Twigger is a British poet, writer and explorer. He lives in Cairo, Egypt.-Life:Twigger was educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. He first began to study engineering, but after six weeks switched to politics, philosophy and economics. His attendance record was poor, and he left...
|
Aikidois a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit." Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to...
|
| 1999 |
A Social History of English Cricket |
Derek Birley Sir Derek Birley was an English educator and writer who had a strong interest in sport, especially cricket.He was educated at grammar school in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, and at Queens' College, Cambridge University....
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
| 2000 |
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life is a 2000 autobiographical book by cyclist Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.The book was written shortly after Armstrong had won the 1999 Tour de France: he went on to win it six further times in successive years, establishing a record...
|
Lance ArmstrongLance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times, after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support...
, Sally JenkinsSally Jenkins is an American sports columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post. Prior employment includes senior writer for Sports Illustrated. She is a graduate of Stanford with degree in English Literature....
|
Lance ArmstrongLance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times, after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support...
|
CyclingBicycle racing is a competition sport in which various types of bicycles are used. There are several categories of bicycle racing including road bicycle racing, cyclo-cross, mountain bike racing, track cycling, BMX, bike trials, and cycle speedway. Bicycle racing is recognised as an Olympic sport...
|
| 2001 |
Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and a Racehorse Seabiscuit: An American Legend is a non-fiction book written by Laura Hillenbrand published in 2001 about the thoroughbred race horse, Seabiscuit. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and was made into a feature film in 2003. It has also been published under the title: Seabiscuit - The...
|
Laura Hillenbrand Laura Hillenbrand is an American author of books and magazine articles.Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Hillenbrand spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland, farm. A favorite of hers was Come On Seabiscuit, a 1963 kiddie book. "I read...
|
SeabiscuitSeabiscuit was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse in the United States. From an inauspicious start, Seabiscuit became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression...
|
Horse racingHorse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
|
| 2002 |
In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens |
Donald McRae Donald McRae is a South African writer. McRae is noted as the only two-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award with Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing in 1996 and In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens in 2002. His other works include The Great Trials of...
|
Joe LouisJoseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
, Jesse OwensJames Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the...
|
Athletics Athletics may refer to:* Athletics , an umbrella sport, comprising track and field, cross country, road running and racewalking** Track and field* Athletics , a term for athletic sports and culture based on human, physical competition...
, BoxingBoxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
|
| 2003 |
Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football |
Tom Bower Tom Bower is a British writer, noted for his revelatory investigative work such as his unauthorized biographies.A former Panorama reporter, his books include unauthorised biographies of Tiny Rowland, Robert Maxwell, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown and Richard Branson...
|
Football |
Football |
| 2004 |
Basil D'Oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy: the Untold Story |
Peter Oborne Peter Oborne is a British journalist and political commentator. He was educated at Sherborne School and The University of Cambridge. He is a Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph columnist, author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, and, with Frances Weaver, the...
|
Basil D'Oliveira Basil Lewis D'Oliveira CBE , known affectionately around the world as "Dolly", was a South African-born English cricketer. D'Oliveira was classified as 'coloured' under the apartheid regime, and hence barred from first-class cricket, resulting in his emigration to England...
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
| 2005 |
My Father & Other Working Class Football Heroes |
Gary Imlach Gary Imlach is a British author, journalist and broadcaster, specialising in sport. Imlach is particularly associated with non-mainstream sports, working for many years as the face of Channel 4's coverage of American Football and the Tour de France, having transferred to ITV when the station...
|
Stewart Imlach -External links:* * by Angus Robertson MP....
|
Football |
| 2006 |
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson |
Geoffrey Ward Geoffrey Champion Ward is an author and screenwriter of various documentary presentations of American history. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1962.He was an editor of American Heritage magazine early in his career...
|
Jack JohnsonJohn Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
|
BoxingBoxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
|
| 2007 |
Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years With Brian Clough |
Duncan Hamilton Duncan Hamilton is a British author and newspaper journalist and two-time winner of the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year award....
|
Brian CloughBrian Howard Clough, OBE was an English footballer and football manager. He is most notable for his success with Derby County and Nottingham Forest. His achievement of winning back-to-back European Cups with Nottingham Forest, a traditionally moderate provincial English club, is considered to be...
|
Football |
| 2008 |
Coming Back to Me |
Marcus TrescothickMarcus Edward Trescothick MBE is an English cricketer. He plays first-class cricket for Somerset County Cricket Club, and represented England in 76 Test matches and 123 One Day Internationals. A left-handed opening batsman, he made his first-class debut for Somerset in 1993 and quickly established...
|
Marcus TrescothickMarcus Edward Trescothick MBE is an English cricketer. He plays first-class cricket for Somerset County Cricket Club, and represented England in 76 Test matches and 123 One Day Internationals. A left-handed opening batsman, he made his first-class debut for Somerset in 1993 and quickly established...
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
| 2009 |
Harold Larwood |
Duncan Hamilton Duncan Hamilton is a British author and newspaper journalist and two-time winner of the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year award....
|
Harold LarwoodHarold Larwood was an English cricket player, an extremely accurate fast bowler best known for his key role as the implementer of fast leg theory in the infamous "bodyline" Ashes Test series of 1932–33....
|
CricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
|
| 2010 |
Beware of the Dog |
Brian Moore |
Brian Moore |
Rugby football Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
|
| 2011 |
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke |
Ronald Reng |
Robert Enke Robert Enke was a German football goalkeeper.Enke played at leading clubs in several European countries, namely Barcelona, Benfica and Fenerbahçe, but made the majority of his appearances for Bundesliga side Hannover 96 in his homeland.He won eight full international caps for the German national...
|
Football |