Tumour memoir wins £30,000 Wellcome book prize
A memoir by the widow of a man who died of a brain tumour has won a prize for new books about health or illness.
Marion Coutts' The Iceberg beat five other titles to receive the £30,000 Wellcome Book Prize, given annually to works that "showcase the breadth and depth of our encounters with medicine".
Coutts' memoir charts the last 18 months in the life of Tom Lubbock.
Chief art critic of the Independent, he died in 2011 of a tumour that robbed him of the ability to write or speak.
Published last July, The Iceberg was previously been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Costa Biography Award.
Author Bill Bryson, chairman of the Wellcome judging panel, called it a "wise, moving and beautifully constructed" book that "stays with you for a long time after".
Coutts is an artist, writer and lecturer who wrote the introduction to her late husband's own memoir, Until Further Notice, I am Alive.