Novelist Rose Tremain has been awarded a Damehood for services to writing in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list.
Speaking to The Bookseller, Tremain described the honour as ‘a gleam of light in an otherwise dark time’, having been diagnosed with cancer and undergoing a major operation late last year, which she is now recovering from at home.
Tremain has been awarded numerous accolades for her historical fiction, including her Booker shortlisted novel Restoration, and most recent work The Gustav Sonata, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and won the Ribalow Prize in 2017. Her memoir Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life was published in 2018.
Tremain added that she ‘was pleased, too, on behalf of all my fellow British writers, who are often overlooked on the honours list’.
Her next novel, Islands of Mercy, will be published in May 2020.
