2019 Costa Book of the Year - The Volunteer, Auschwitz Resistance Biography Wins Tuesday Jan 28,2020

The Volunteer, a biography of a Polish resistance fighter who infiltrated the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has won the Costa Book of the Year award

The book, by former war reporter Jack Fairweather, beat four other titles to the prize on the day after the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation

It is the second year running that a biography exploring this period of history has won the £30,000 prize.

Fairweather said he had been inspired to write "a story lost to history"

The Welsh author's book tells of Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1940

There he sabotaged facilities, gathered evidence of the mass murder of the Jews and spread news of the Holocaust to the Allies.

Pilecki escaped in 1943 and later fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944

Executed in 1948 by Poland's communist regime, his story did not become widely known until the 1990s.

Fairweather's book was named best biography of 2019 earlier this month alongside four other Costa category winners:

• First novel - The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
• Novel - Middle England by Jonathan Coe
• Poetry - Flèche by Mary Jean Chan
• Children's book - Asha & the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan

Tuesday's ceremony in central London also saw US-born writer Anna Dempsey receive the 2019 Costa Short Story Award.

Dempsey, a teacher in south-east London, won the £3,500 prize for her story The Dedicated Dancers of the Greater Oaks Retirement Community.

The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971 to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.