A new addition to Literary Award World, the Spear’s Book Awards, aim to celebrate the very best books of the year – from finance to fiction.
Spears, we believe, are a wealth management company.The mix of award categories presents a selection of books that will no doubt appeal to their demographic.
Prizes are given out for categories which, in the view of the judges, include some of the most influential books of the past twelve months. Not sure what financial recognition for winners, if any, is involved. Prestige far more important at this end of town perchance?
2010 Winners
CITI PRIVATE BANK FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR
John Cassidy How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities 
Andrew Ross Sorkin Too Big To Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street
(Allen Lane) 
(Faber & Faber) Robert Sackville-West Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles
(Bloomsbury) Tad Friend Cheerful Money: Me, My Family and The Last Days of Wasp
Splendour (Little, Brown) Mark Girouard Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640
(YUP) 
(Penguin)Selina Hastings
Search Amazon.com for Selina Hastings, author of nominated biography of Somerset MaughamHans Luijten (Ed), Leo Jansen (Ed), Nienke Bakker (Ed)
Vincent van Gogh – The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition
(Thames and Hudson) SPEAR’S BOOK AWARDS 2010 SHORTLIST
For a corporate history or non-fiction book that examines a historical incident, trend or period of interest to Spear’s readers. 2009 winner: Lords of Finance
by Liaquat Ahamed (William Heinemann).
(Penguin) (Allen Lane) 
(Princeton University Press) 
(Public Affairs) 
(McGraw-Hill) For a non-fiction book that tackles a contemporary economic issue, including but not limited to the credit crisis and recession. 2009 winner: Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett (Little, Brown).
(Allen Lane) 
(Allen Lane) (Allen Lane) 
(Wiley) 
(Viking)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. Biographies of historical figures are eligible for this award. 2009 winner: Chagall: Love and Exile by Jackie Wullschlager (Allen Lane).
(John Murray) 
(Bloomsbury) 
(Macmillan) 
(W&N)FAMILY AND SOCIAL HISTORIES OF THE YEAR
One award for a book that provides an account of a UK or international family or dynasty of interest to Spear’s readers, one for an account of a UK or international social or historical period of interest to Spear’s readers. 2009 winner: Sissinghurst
by Adam Nicolson (HarperPress).Gentleman and Blackguards: Gambling Mania and the Plot to Steal The Derby of 1844
(W&N) Tad Friend Cheerful Money: Me, My Family and The Last Days of Wasp Splendour
(Little, Brown) (Bloomsbury) 
(Atlantic) ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF THE YEAR
For a large-format image-led book. 2009 winner: The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé
(Thames Hudson).
(Bloomsbury)
(Knopf) 
(Transatlantic) (YUP) 
(YUP) 
(Frances Lincoln)NOVEL OF THE YEAR For a work of fiction, not necessarily on an economic or financial theme. The winner of this award will be chosen by the readers of Spear’s. 2009 winner: Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate).
(Jonathan Cape)
Hutchinson)
(Bloomsbury)
(Sceptre)
(Faber and Faber) (Thames and Hudson)Sebastian Schütze Caravaggio: The Complete Works 
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home
| 
| 
| 
| 
|
2009 Winners
Financial Book of the Year
Gillian Tett, Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe (Little, Brown) - In the mid 1990s, at a vast hotel complex on a private Florida beach, dozens of bankers from JP Morgan gathered for what was to become a legendary off-site meeting. It was a wild weekend. But among the drinking, nightclubbing and fist-fights lay a more serious purpose - to assess the possibility of building a business around the new-fangled concepts of credit derivatives.
Financial History Book of the Year
Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: 1929, the Great Depression and the Bankers Who Broke the World (William Heinemann) - Many of us take it as a given that the Great Depression resulted from a confluence of inexorable forces beyond any one person or government's control. This title explains how it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that...
Biography of the Year
Jackie Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile (Allen Lane) - 'This is a masterly biography. Jackie Wullschlager has a painter's eye, a historian's grasp of context and a novelist's pace and momentum. She gives back to Chagall's paintings the sharpness and strangeness that they had for his contemporaries, and she makes the story of his life so gripping that I couldn't put the book down' - Hilary Spurling.
Family History of the Year
Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst (HarperPress) - A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson of the history of Nicolson's own national treasure, his family home: Sissinghurst.
Novel of the Year
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)- Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas , 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.' England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the...
Coffee-Table Book of the Year
Robert Murphy and Ivan Terestchenko - The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge (Thames & Hudson) - The star pieces from fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's art collection includes works by Cezanne, Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge amassed the collection together before the designers death in June 2008.
SHORTLIST AND WINNERS
Financial Book Of The Year
| 
| 
|
WINNER: Gillian Tett
Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and
Unleashed a Catastrophe - (Little, Brown) - In the mid 1990s, at a vast hotel complex on a private Florida beach, dozens of bankers from JP Morgan gathered for what was to become a legendary off-site meeting. It was a wild weekend. But among the drinking, nightclubbing and fist-fights lay a more serious purpose - to assess the possibility of building a business around the new-fangled concepts of credit derivatives.
Other Shortlisted
Philip Augar - Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City’s Golden
Decade (Bodley Head)- In 1997 it seemed that things in the City could only get better. The incoming Labour government gave the Bank of England independence. For ten years everything went according to plan. And then in the summer of 2007 everything began to collapse. This book tells the story of how a major economy tried to reinvent itself.
Matthew Bishop and Michael Green - Philanthrocapitalism: How The Rich Can Save the World and Why We Should Let Them (A&C Black) - A fascinating examination of how today's leading philanthropists are revolutionising the way they give, using new methods to have a vastly greater impact on the world. For philanthropists of the past, charity was often a matter of simply giving...
Vincent Cable - The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What It Means (Atlantic Books)
William D. Cohan- House of Cards: How Wall Street’s Gamblers Broke Capitalism: The Fall of Bear Stearns and
the Collapse of the Global Market (Allen Lane) - Explains the causes of the world economic crisis and how we should respond to the challenges it brings. This book urges readers to resist the siren voices that promote isolationism and nationalism as the answer to economic woes. This is the...
Judges: Christopher Silvester, deputy editor, Spear’s · Chris Blackhurst, business editor, Evening Standard - Martin Vander Weyer, editor, Spectator Business - · Richard Oldfield, executive partner, Oldfield Partners
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home
Financial History Book Of The Year
| 
| 
| 
| 
WINNER: Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: 1929, the Great Depression and the Bankers Who Broke the World (William Heinemann) - Many of us take it as a given that the Great Depression resulted from a confluence of inexorable forces beyond any one person or government's control. This title explains how it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that...
Bryan Burrough- Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (Penguin Press)- In The Big Rich, bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the twentieth century - Texas oil. By weaving together the multigenerational stories of the state's four wealthiest oil fortunes, Burrough has produced an enthralling tale of money, family, and power in the American century.
Charles D. Ellis - The Partnership: A History of Goldman Sachs (Allen Lane) - Goldman Sachs is without peer in the world of finance. And yet the mystery of how Goldman Sachs accomplishes record profits, year after year, remains. This work reveals the key events and decisions that tell the colourful, character...
Niall Ferguson - The Ascent of Money (Allen Lane) - Shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. This book reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history. It explains why the origins of the French Revolution lie in a stock market bubble caused by a...
David Marsh - The Euro (Yale University Press) - David Marsh gives the first comprehensive account of the Euro's long, complex journey from vision to reality - a process in which Britain and the US, as well as Germany and France, have played key parts. Drawing on exclusive narrative accounts...
Judges: Christopher Silvester, deputy editor, Spear’s - · James Strachan, member of the Court of the Bank of England - Stephen Hill, businessman and economist - · William Keegan, senior economics commentator, Observer
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home | 
| 
| 
| 
Winner: Jackie Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile (Allen Lane) - 'This is a masterly biography. Jackie Wullschlager has a painter's eye, a historian's grasp of context and a novelist's pace and momentum. She gives back to Chagall's paintings the sharpness and strangeness that they had for his contemporaries, and she makes the story of his life so gripping that I couldn't put the book down' - Hilary Spurling.
Anne De Courcy - Snowdon: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - Anthony Armstrong-Jones was born to a Welsh father and English-Jewish mother. Creative and inventive, he attended Eton and then Cambridge. The engagement of this motorbike-riding freelance photographer in 1960 to Princess Margaret was a bombshell. Friends privately predicted disaster. And so it proved. But meanwhile in the 1960s, mixing with actors, artists and pop stars, they were the epitome of stylish and unstuffy arts-loving Royals - and one of the iconic glamorous couples of that era. Tony continued to work and both began to have affairs. They divorced in 1978.
Caroline Moorehead - Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution (Chatto & Windus)- Lucie de la Tour du Pin was not only an outstanding diarist, but a remarkable woman who was witness to one of the most dramatic and brutal periods of history in which she played the role of observer, commentator and, often, participant.
Frances Osborne - The Bolter: The Woman Who Scandalised 1920s Society and Became White Mischief’s Infamous Seductress (Virago Press)- 'This is a truly astonishing book. Frances Osborne has not just brought to life a dizzyingly rich and scandalous slice of social history, she has produced a tragic and deeply moving tale as well. It is far more gripping than any novel I have...
Michael Wolff - The Man Who Owns the News (Bodley Head) - In a career spanning four decades Rupert Murdoch has built News International into a $70 billion corporation. He presides over what we read, what we watch, what we come to believe about ourselves, to an extent that is without serious parallel...
Judges: Josh Spero, senior editor, Spear’s - Tom Bower, biographer and journalist - · Lord Chadlington - Clive Aslet, former editor, Country Life
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home
| 
| 
| 
Family History of the Year
Winner: Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst (HarperPress) - A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson of the history of Nicolson's own national treasure, his family home: Sissinghurst.
William Fiennes - The Music Room (Picador) - William Fiennes spent his childhood in a magical place, a moated castle, the perfect environment for a child with a brimming imagination. It is a house alive with history, beauty and mystery, but the young boy growing up in it is equally in awe of...
Jane Mulvagh - Madresfield (Doubleday)- Madresfield Court is an arrestingly romantic stately home in the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. It has been continuously owned and lived in by the same family, the Lygons, back to the time of the "Domesday Book". This book explores its treasures.
Jane Wellesley - Wellington: A Journey Through My Family (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - Jane Wellesley is a member of one of Britain's most illustrious families. Her father, the 8th Duke of Wellington, was born in 1915, a hundred years after the first Duke's momentous victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, but only a little over sixty years after the death of his celebrated ancestor. When the 'Iron Duke' died Queen Victoria wept with the nation, mourning the loss of 'the greatest man England has known'. One and a half million people swarmed London's streets to watch his cortege pass on its way to St Paul's.
Judges: William Cash, editor-in-chief, Spear’s - · Peter York, cultural commentator - Dr Vanessa Neumann, editor-at-large of Diplomat magazine - · Melissa Lesson, partner, Mishcon de Reya
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home
| 
| 
| 
| 
Winner: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)- Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas , 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.' England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the...
Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture (Faber & Faber) - Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her one-hundredth birthday - no one is quite sure - faces uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading...
Jonathan Littell - The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus) - Dr Max Aue was a former SS intelligence officer, who has reinvented himself as a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and...
Joseph O’Neill - Netherland (Pantheon Books)- In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans - a banker originally from the Netherlands - finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London.
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn (Viking) - From the award-winning author of "The Master" comes a moving historical novel set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, concerning a young woman torn between her family and her past in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
Judges: William Cash, editor-in-chief, Spear’s - Patrick Keogh, head of the Faber Academy - Catherine Ostler, editor, Tatler
2009 Winners |Financial Book of the Year | Financial History Book of the Year | Biography of the Year | Family History of the Year | Novel of the Year | Coffee-Table Book of the Year | back to top | home | 
| 
| 
| 
|
WINNER: Robert Murphy and Ivan Terestchenko - The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge (Thames & Hudson) - The star pieces from fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's art collection includes works by Cezanne, Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge amassed the collection together before the designers death in June 2008.
Mirabel Cecil and David Mlinaric - Mlinaric on Decorating (Frances Lincoln) - David Mlinaric's outstanding skill is in the restoration of historic buildings: he is legendary for his appreciation of their architecture and ability to bring them back to life, through a combination of research and inspired imagination. In addition he has crafted classic modern interiors as elegant as the historic rooms his expertise has so effectively revived.
Marie-Noel de Gary and Jean-Marie del Moral - The Camondo Legacy: The Passions of a Paris Collector (Thames & Hudson) - The Musee Nissim de Camondo, built by Rene Sargent and modelled after the Petit Trianon at Versailles, is one of Pariss finest early 20th-century mansions. Now part of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, it is the setting for a collection of 18th...
Diana Donald and Jane Munro (eds) - Endless Forms: Natural Science and the Visual Arts (Yale University Press) - This illustrated book is the first to explore Darwin's links with artistic traditions and his impact on the visual arts in Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Bringing together art and science in a completely original way, it sets works by major artists such as Church, Landseer, Heade, Redon, Cezanne and Monet in a fresh and illuminating context.
Michael Snodin and Nigel Llewellyn - Baroque: Magnificence and Style (V&A Publishing) - Lavish, opulent, and unabashedly dramatic, the Baroque style developed out of the Renaissance with the primary goal of inspiring awe. The most complex and sophisticated movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Baroque encompassed all...
David Yarrow - Nowhere (Perspective Photo Press) -
Judges: Josh Spero, senior editor, Spear’s - Nick Foulkes, aesthete and journalist - Anthony Haden-Guest, journalist and arts editor, Spear’s - Manfredi della Gherardesca, fine art dealer
