Bookies name Helen Macdonald favourite to win Samuel Johnson prize

Macdonalds H Is for Hawk could become the first memoir after 15 years to win the prestigious prize

If the bookies are right, the Samuel Johnson prize looks set to go to a memoir for the first time, after 15 years. William Hill and Ladbrokes both have H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (pictured) as short-odds favourite, and they respectively rate Marion Couttss The Iceberg: A Memoir as second and third favourite. Has the authorial I gained respectability at last?

Dominated by history and biography since it was first awarded in 1999, to be a memoirist snubbed by this prize is to belong to a rather distinguished club, a salon des refuses,, as can be seen from the relevant titles honoured by other, less sniffy, awards over the same period. Lorna Sages Bad Blood, Diana Athills Somewhere Towards the End and Edmund de Waals The Hare with Amber Eyes (the last-named only longlisted for the Samuel Johnson) have won the Costa biography prize. Winners of the Orwell prize for political books have included Andrea Gilliess Keeper, Christopher Hitchenss Hitch-22 and Alan Johnsons This Boy.