Irish poet Seamus Heaney has won Britain's coveted Whitbread Book of the Year award for the second time with his reworking of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.
The Nobel prize-winning poet beat children's author J. K. Rowling, with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to the GBP21,000 (HK$269,000) prize.
The judges, including Texan model Jerry Hall, British actress Imogen Stubbs and leading opposition Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe, said Heaney's Beowulf had uncovered a 'buried treasure'.
Heaney's work, which tells the story of a mighty warrior who defeats a man-eating monster and its mother, was awarded the GBP2,000 pound Whitbread Poetry Award earlier this month.
Speaking after the awards ceremony, Heaney said he had set out to 'bring the noise I make' to the original.
The last collection of Heaney, 60, The Spirit Level, won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in 1996. Harry Potter won the GBP10,000 children's book award and was allowed into the main competition after a rules change.
