Hunt's Post: Peer's prize for tale of his eccentric ancestors
A BOOK about his eccentric family has won a prize for Lord Hemingford, Nicholas Herbert.
Lord Hemingford has won the £250 first prize for non-fiction in the 2010 National Self-Publishing Awards for his book, Successive Journeys.
He received the award at a ceremony at the Society of Authors in London, where he also won the top award for Self-Publisher of the Year, which he shared with another author.
The judges praised the 398-page hardback book, which he also laid out and indexed himself, and the marketing of the book in which he had involved some of his 10 grandchildren as salesmen.
Printing was arranged through Authors Online at Gamlingay.
As reported by The Hunts Post when the book was published in November 2008, the odd ancestors include an arms smuggler in Paraguay, an actor who drank 93 half pints of ale a day, a woman who drank too much gin before losing the Wimbledon final, a tenor who sang at four coronations and a mother who bore 18 children in 22 years. Other characters were a surgeon who amputated a patient's frostbitten toes with a pair of scissors, a diamond merchant in 1777 worth the modern equivalent of £72million, a man who taught a president and a king as well as a politician who saved the Bank of England's gold reserves.
Lord Hemingford, of Hemingford Abbots, who is a former journalist, said: "I am thrilled to have been given this recognition, which I hope will encourage yet more readers to enjoy the book. I am contemplating bringing it out in paperback in good time for Christmas."
Lord Hemingford has won the £250 first prize for non-fiction in the 2010 National Self-Publishing Awards for his book, Successive Journeys.
He received the award at a ceremony at the Society of Authors in London, where he also won the top award for Self-Publisher of the Year, which he shared with another author.
The judges praised the 398-page hardback book, which he also laid out and indexed himself, and the marketing of the book in which he had involved some of his 10 grandchildren as salesmen.
Printing was arranged through Authors Online at Gamlingay.
As reported by The Hunts Post when the book was published in November 2008, the odd ancestors include an arms smuggler in Paraguay, an actor who drank 93 half pints of ale a day, a woman who drank too much gin before losing the Wimbledon final, a tenor who sang at four coronations and a mother who bore 18 children in 22 years. Other characters were a surgeon who amputated a patient's frostbitten toes with a pair of scissors, a diamond merchant in 1777 worth the modern equivalent of £72million, a man who taught a president and a king as well as a politician who saved the Bank of England's gold reserves.
Lord Hemingford, of Hemingford Abbots, who is a former journalist, said: "I am thrilled to have been given this recognition, which I hope will encourage yet more readers to enjoy the book. I am contemplating bringing it out in paperback in good time for Christmas."
