Six British Book Awards for Penguin Random House

This evening's British Book Awards saw six wins for Penguin Random House UK titles, authors and colleagues, with Penguin General imprint Viking winning Imprint of the Year.

The awards, nicknamed 'The Nibbies' and organised by The Bookseller, honour and celebrate the commercial successes of publishers, authors and bookshops. The ceremony, hosted by Lauren Laverne, saw two wins for Philip Pullman, capping a fantastic year for the His Dark Materials author, who was named Author of the Year, as well as winning Audiobook of the Year for La Belle Sauvage (Penguin Random House Audio).

On winning the Author of the Year Award, Philip said that he "couldn't be more happy with the way" La Belle Sauvage had been received. "I seemed to have been writing it for 18 years, and I let the publishers have it when I thought it was OK - but you can never tell what readers and critics will feel", he said.

Hamish Hamilton Editor Simon Prosser followed up on an unprecedented four Man Booker Prize longlistings (for Ali Smith's Autumn, Mohsin Hamid's Exit West, Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Zadie Smith's Swing Time) by winning the Editor of the Year award. Fellow Penguin General imprint Viking's success comes in the wake of an excellent 2017, with key titles including John le Carré's The Legacy of Spies and prize-winners The Power by Naomi Alderman (Women's Prize for Fiction) and Hisham Matar's The Return (winner of The Pulitizer Prize in Biography and The Rathbones Folio Prize). The imprint, which had a 21% growth in sales in 2017, will also publish Michelle Obama's highly anticipated memoir Becoming on November 13.

There was a third win for Penguin General with Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris' The Lost Words being named joint Children's Book of the Year with Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give (Walker Books); whilst Jamie Oliver's bestselling 5 Ingredients (Michael Joseph) was victorious in the Non-Fiction Lifestyle category.

Cornerstone’s marketing campaign for Eskiboy by Wiley (William Heinemann) was also highly commended in the Marketing Strategy of the Year category.

Speaking after the awards ceremony, Penguin Random House UK CEO Tom Weldon said, "I am always incredibly proud of our company and the work we do, but it’s great to see these successes also recognised by the industry. Indeed – we had a fantastic 25 nominations for this year’s awards, including in every single book category. All were united by brilliant and bold publishing, and supported by highly creative marketing, publicity and sales campaigns."

Here's a bit more about each of our winning titles:

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