New sponsor to inject some java into U.K. literary award

The Whitbread Book Awards, one of the U.K.'s most prestigious literary prizes, has been renamed the Costa Book Awards after the coffee-shop chain that has taken over the sponsorship.

Costa Coffee, a 35-year-old chain of coffee shops, assumed sponsorship of the awards, after its corporate parent, hospitality group Whitbread bowed out.

Whitbread, which started out as a chain of pubs, owns Costa, which was started by two Italian brothers and now has 400 shops in the U.K.

The Costa Awards, like their predecessor, will offer 25,000 British pounds ($51,420)to a first prize winner and 5,000 pounds to the winners in each of five categories — novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's literature.

The award will be presented in January and is open to writers from the U.K. and Ireland. Hilary Spurling won the prize this year for Matisse the Master, the second part of her biography of the French painter.

"This is the perfect match for the Costa brand as there is a very natural association between books and reading and the U.K.'s growing coffee culture," said John Derkach, Costa's managing director, according to Reuters.

Costa regards the sponsorship as a long-term association, he said. Whitbreadsponsored the awards for 34 years.