Tiffany O?Callaghan, CultureLab editor
A biography of William Harvey, the 17th-century English physician who was the first to understand how blood circulates throughout the body, won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Book Prize for works of fiction and non-fiction exploring medicine. Author Thomas Wright was awarded the prize for his book Circulation: William Harvey?s revolutionary idea last night at a ceremony in London.
Following a growing trend in the publishing industry, the shortlisted books - three novels and three works of non-fiction - were introduced to the audience with video trailers. Among other things, the books explore hospital life in violence-torn Afghanistan, the role of surging testosterone in the financial crisis of 2008, an imagined future in which genetic engineering raises the prospect of "perfect" children and the bloody enterprise of early surgery. The trailers, then, were distinctly grim, and made more so by being interspersed onscreen by scenes of a dark hospital ward with eerily flickering lamps.
When he stepped to the podium to accept the prize, Wright made light of this introduction: ?I felt a bit squeamish after watching the film of my book.? Yet an oversized cheque for the amount of ?25,000 seemed to help. ?Now I feel a bit better.?
When announcing the winner, journalist Mark Lawson said that the panel of judges, which included himself, neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, writer and poet Ruth Padel, editor of FT Weekend Magazine Sue Matthias and writer?Brooke Magnanti, voted unanimously in favour of Wright?s book.
Circulation is the third non-fiction work?to take the prize since it was initiated in 2009. That year Andrea Gillies won for the non-fiction Keeper, and in 2010 Rebecca Skloot won for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Last year Alice LaPlante became the first novelist to win, with Turn of Mind.
The full 2012 shortlist was?Circulation by Thomas Wright, Merivel by Rose Tremain, Our Lady of Alice Bhati by Mohammed Hanif, Perfect People by Peter James, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates and The Train in the Night by Nick Coleman.
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