Simon Trewin

The eleventh annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced on Tuesday 28 October at Soho House in London.

The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas featured heavily. Vera Farmiga (Best Actress), Best Newcomer (Asa Butterfield - see left) and Best Director (Mark Herman) are nominated and it was also announced that David Thewlis will received a lifetime achievement award. The films receiving the most nominations are Hunger and In Bruges tied with seven nominations each. Slumdog Millionaire follows with six, Shifty one of the first from the Film London Microwave slate receives five nominations, Somers Town, Son of Rambow and The Duchess hold four nominations each. Other films with multiple nominations are The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Happy-Go-Lucky both receiving three, and Man on Wire, The Daisy Chain, Eden Lake and The Escapist receiving two each. There is an unprecedented number of twenty-three other nominated films throughout the categories. For full details click here.

Andrew Martin pipped to the post in the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Novel Award

Laura Wilson (left) has been awarded the £3,000 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award 2008 for her novel Stratton’s War (Orion), after being shortlisted twice before. Wilson’s debut novel A Little Death (Bantam) was shortlisted in 2000, and The Lover (Orion) was shortlisted in 2004. Her win this year was announced at a ceremony on October 27th. The other shortlisted novels were: The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin (Bantam Press); A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr (Quercus); Death on a Branch Line by Andrew Martin (Faber); Revelation by C J Samson (Macmillan) and Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor (Michael Joseph).

 Many congratulations to Andrew Martin whose Jim Stringer novel MURDER AT DEVIATION JUNCTION is shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award. The winner is announced on Octobert 27th at 7pm. Andrew’s pitch-perfect non-fiction tome HOW TO GET THINGS REALLY FLAT is published this week from Short Books and If you didn’t catch his beautifully crafted documentary BETWEEN THE LINES on BBC4 examining how the train and the railways came to shape the work of writers and film-makers then you can view it via BBC iPlayer here.