Andrea Gillies has been receiving a lot of publicity recently for her book ‘Keeper’. We had already recognised its potential , and asked if she would give a talk at Warwick Words which we are glad to say she has agreed to do.  A two page article about the importance of her book was in this week’s ‘Times’, and below is the article that appeared in ‘The Bookseller’.

Gillies Keeps Orwell Prize

20.05.10 | Victoria Gallagher

Andrea Gillies’ Keeper ‘(Short Books) has won this year’s Orwell Prize for political writing.
Gillies fought off competition from titles including Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly (Faber), Christopher De Bellaigue’s Rebel Land and Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad (Atlantic) to claim the £3,000 prize money and plaque. The book chronicles the author’s experience of caring for her mother-in-law, Nancy, as her Alzheimer’s disease accelerates.

This year’s Book Prize judges were Jonathan Heawood, director at English PEN, Andrew Holgate, literary editor of the Sunday Times and Francine Stock, writer and broadcaster.

The judges said: “Andrea Gillies’ extraordinary first-hand account of caring for a relative with Alzheimer’s disease rises beyond memoir – although it is a startlingly honest and vivid one – to deliver a radical exploration of identity and memory.

“She argues powerfully for change in the way we deal with age and senility, a looming political issue for the 21st century.”

‘Keeper’ also won the inaugural Wellcome Prize for medicine in literature.