Diana Athill wins Costa award at 91

Diana Athill, the revered British literary publisher, novelist and memoirist, has emerged triumphant in the Costa book awards, winning the biography category with Somewhere Towards the End, which deals with the process of getting old, a subject of which the author (pictured) can claim intimate knowledge having celebrated her 91st birthday last month.

The book, which is described as "vivid and frank" and addresses "what it means to be old and to face death every day", was praised by the judges, who included the former BBC newscaster Michael Buerk, for being a "candid, detailed, charming" work "totally lacking in self-pity or sentimentality and above all, beautifully, beautifully written."

Before her retirement in 1993 at the age of 75, Athill published some of the biggest names in literature, among them Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler and Simone de Beauvoir. In an interview in Monday's Guardian, before her Costa win was revealed, she recalled awards ceremonies she'd attended in times past, saying how she would "sit with authors of mine who had been shortlisted... saying, 'Now, we mustn't hope, we might easily not win', and then seeing their poor faces when in fact they didn't, and they were bravely pinning on a smile."

Athill is the oldest ever category winning author in the history of these book awards, which used to be supported by Whitbread. She receives £5,000 for winning the biography category and will now go on to compete with the four other category winners for the overall Costa Book of the Year, which carries a further prize of £25,000 and will be announced on January 27.

The other category winners were: First Novel - Sadie Jones, The Outcast; Novel - Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture; Poetry - Adam Foulds, The Broken Word, and Children's - Michelle Magorian, Just Henry.