Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life has been awarded the 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Literature prize. Atkinson beat ‘The Kills’ by Richard House and ‘Marriage Material’ by Sathnam Sanghera to the prestigious prize, whose previous winners include Hilary Mantel, Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn, at a ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel hosted by Melvyn Bragg earlier this week.

The South Bank Awards are considered one of the world’s most coveted arts awards, celebrating the best of British culture across visual art, theatre, opera, dance, comedy, classical music, pop, TV drama, film and literature. Presented for the 17th year running by Bragg, whose BBC programme ‘The South Bank Show’ originated them, they were judged this year by The Observer’s Arts Editor Sarah Donaldson, The Times Arts Editor Alex O’Connell and the Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye.

Life After Life, which follows Ursual Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the 20th century again and again, won the Costa Best Novel Prize and was shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and has been translated into twenty-eight languages.

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