The winner of the twenty-ninth Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize, worth £7,500, will be announced on 18 March at a reception in the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University, Belfast.

The work eligible covers a two-year period (2024 and 2025) and has produced a wide and stimulating variety of entries.

In arriving at a final short-list the judges stressed that they had chosen works that embodied the objectives of the Prize, which are to promote and encourage peace and reconciliation in Ireland, a greater understanding between the peoples of Britain and Ireland, or closer co-operation between the partners of the European Community.  These are the ideals which inspired Christopher Ewart-Biggs and to which his widow Jane subsequently dedicated herself. A special prize will also be awarded for a body of work reflecting these ideals.

Speaking for the Judges, Professor Roy Foster said:

“We have chosen:

• a vivid and passionate investigation into the murky background of the horrifying Loughinisland murders of 1994
• an original and fascinating portrait of politics and violence in the three Ulster counties excluded from Northern Ireland by Partition
• an incisive analysis of the Boundary Commission intended to rationalize and adapt that Partition, and its failure
• a searing novel about criminal life on the Irish border, by a novelist who powerfully blends fact and fiction
• a forensic and clear-sighted discussion of the  possibilities, probabilities and implications of doing away with the border
• and a beautifully-written memoir of family concealments and disruptions which illuminates much about society in mid-twentieth century Ireland, and the oddly symbiotic relationship between Ireland and Britain.

“This year’s short-list highlights the depth of analysis brought to bear on various aspects of  recent Irish history by an impressive range of authoritative writers, all of whom powerfully contribute to understanding in the sense that this Prize seeks to recognize.”

The six shortlisted entries for the Memorial Prize are:

Trevor Birney, Shooting Crows: mass murder, state collusion and press freedom (Merrion Press)

Edward Burke, Ulster’s Lost Counties: loyalism and paramilitarism since 1920 (Cambridge University Press)

Eoin MacNamee, The Bureau (Riverrun)

Cormac Moore, The Root of all Evil: the Irish Boundary Commission (Irish Academic Press)

Sam McBride and Fintan O’Toole, For and Against a United Ireland (Royal Irish Academy)

Clair Wills, Missing Persons, Or  My Grandmother’s Secrets (Allen Lane)

The Judges will be available for interview.  Please contact: Claire McAuley: clairemcauley@hotmail.com.