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Read Smart: The 2022 Winner - Hear from Katherine Rundell

19 November 2022

Tune into the final Read Smart podcast episode of the year, where 2022 prize winner Katherine Rundell discusses her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne and how she feels following the announcement. Our host Razia Iqbal also speaks to some of the other guests at the awards ceremony, including former judge Sara Collins, last year’s chair of judges Andrew Holgate and Margaret Busby.

The winner was livestreamed on FacebookLive and YouTube at a gala dinner generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation on Thursday 17 November.

Super-Infinite gives readers a glimpse into the tempestuous life of poet John Donne. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. Described by Rundell as being perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language, the work provides a fascinating insight into Donne's multi-layered existence.

Super-Infinite
was chosen by this year’s judging panel: writer and Associate Editor of The Bookseller, Caroline Sanderson (chair); writer and science journalist, Laura Spinney; critic and writer for The Observer, Rachel Cooke; BBC journalist and presenter, Clive Myrie; author and New Yorker writer, Samanth Subramanian; and critic and broadcaster, Georgina Godwin.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.