| M.W. Craven has been announced this evening as the winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, presented by Harrogate International Festivals, for The Botanist, with Elly Griffiths highly commended for The Locked Room. Multi-award-winning author M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving ten years later to complete a social work degree. Seventeen years after taking up a probation officer role in Cumbria, at the rank of assistant chief officer, he became a full-time author. The Botanist, an instant Sunday Times bestseller, is his latest thriller featuring D.S. Washington Poe. He receives a £3,000 prize, as well as an engraved beer cask handcrafted by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakstons Brewery. |
