Two of Britain's best-known literary figures, novelist AS Byatt and critic John Carey, have each received the 2010 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the oldest British literary award.
Awarded annually by the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, the prizes were announced today by best-selling crime novelist Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Byatt, the pen-name for Dame Antonia Duffy, received the fiction prize for The Children's Book, published last year, which explores the effect on children of their parents' artistic creativity in the novel set in the early 20th century.
Carey, one of Britain's foremost literary experts and Emeritus Merton Professor of English at Oxford University, received the biography award for his book William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies.
Golding, a Nobel laureate for literature, was himself recipient of the James Tait Black prize in 1979.
The prizes, founded in 1919 and awarded for the best work of fiction and best biography published during the previous 12 months, are the only major British awards judged by scholars and students. They are each worth £10,000.