The fourth time was lucky for Ross King, who won the $25,000 RBC Taylor Prize on March 6 for Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of Water Lilies (Bond Street Books). Mad Enchantment was previously shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and longlisted for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction.
This was the fourth Taylor Prize nomination for the Saskatchewan-born, U.K.-based author and art historian, who was first shortlisted in 2007 for The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (Bond Street). His most recent nomination was in 2013 for Leonardo and The Last Supper (Bond Street). During his acceptance speech, King spoke about his personal history with the award and its organizers, and how nice it was that over the past decade he has “become part of the Taylor Prize family.”
The jury – comprising author Colin McAdam, historian John English, and broadcaster Ann MacMillan – praised King as an “exceptional art historian,” calling Mad Enchantment “essential reading for all those who want to understand the intersection of politics, nationalism, and culture in France during the First World War.”
The other finalists were:
- Max Eisen‚ By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz (HarperCollins)
- Matti Friedman‚ Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier’s Story (Signal/McClelland & Stewart)
- Marc Raboy‚ Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World (Oxford University Press)
- Diane Schoemperlen‚ This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications (HarperCollins)