We are delighted to have partnered once again with The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award, which has just announced its 2023 winner, Tom Crewe. 

Tom will benefit from two years’ London Library membership, with the shortlist receiving a year’s membership. We are proud to celebrate authors of the highest quality at the beginning of their careers and provide a critical support system to the very best talent at work right now.

Debut novelist, journalist and London Library member Tom Crewe has been named winner of the award for The New Life, a novel described by judge James McConnachie as ‘thrillingly intimate’ and ‘a compassionate and tenderly sensual account of masculine sexuality.’

Crewe is a current member of The London Library and much of the novel was written in the Library, taking research from materials within our collections, such as John Addington Symonds’ manuscript in both the Grosskurth and Regis editions.

A daring novel of nineteenth-century forbidden desire, The New Life is a bold and beautiful book set in London, 1894; the Oscar Wilde trial is igniting public outcry, and everything John and Henry have longed for is suddenly under threat. United by a shared vision, the two begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality.

For over 30 years, the most influential prize for young writers in the UK and Ireland has been a definitive indicator of rising literary talent. Crewe now joins recent winners Cal Flyn, Jay Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Adam Weymouth, Sally Rooney, Max Porter and Sarah Howe.