Tonight at the IMAX it’s the Political Book of the Year Awards. I have to admit I am getting pre-ceremony nerves. I had the idea for this event in the middle of 2012 and it’s certainly been a challenge to organise everything in such a short time. But my team at Biteback have done a fantastic job and we are very grateful to Paddy Power for their sponsorship and to Lord Ashcroft for donating the £16,000 of prize money. The main award winner will collect a cheque for £10,000 and £3,000 goes to the Young Writer of the year and a further £3,000 to the best debut author of the year.
We’ve got 450 people coming to watch eleven people collect very deserved prizes for their outstanding contributions to political literature. The event was sold out two weeks ago, so any nervousness I had about the likely size of the audience was rather misplaced!
Gyles Brandreth is our compere and we have a whole host of stars to present the awards. I’ll do a full report tomorrow, but I’ll be tweeting the winners throughout the event. You can also follow the @polbookawards Twitter feed or hashtag #pbawards. If you’d like to see the full list of awards, judges and shortlisted books go the Political Book Awards website.
