Andrew Miller has won the Costa Book of the Year prize for his novel Pure.

The decision is understood to have been arrived at after some considerable controversy among the judges, with some supporting the strongly tipped biography of the Georgian poet Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis (Now All Roads Lead to France: the Last Years of Edward Thomas).

Pure is set in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century and has been described by chair of the judging panel Geordie Greig as “a rich and brilliant historical novel of death and superstition ... a morality tale which engrosses with its vivid evocation of pre-revolutionary France”.

Fifty-one-year-old Miller said he would spend his £30,000 prize money on “living”. He said: “It’s not as if writers tend to be particularly wealthy people. I certainly have no private income. What money we raise through events like this we pay the mortgage I’m afraid, we live off it.”

The other shortlisted books were Carol Ann Duffy’s The Bees, Christie Watson’s Tiny Sunbirds Far Away and Moira Young’s Blood Red Road.

The Daily Telegraph on the Costa Award