The Pike wins Samual Johnson Prize.

We have all known, perhaps had as friends, people like Gabriele d' Annunzio. Complete shits to women they were always surrounded by girls. Never short of incendiary ideas and grandiose schemes these people don't seem capable of much empathy. They would never allow concern for fellow human beings to get in the way of a good idea. Serial womaniser, poet, proto-fascist, self styled leader of the Free City of Fiume,  d' Annunzio was many things but he was never boring. Lucy Hughes-Hallet has won the Samual Johnson Prize for The Pike, her biography of this awful but fascinating man. Those of us who might feel a bit sniffy about Gabriele d' Annunzio should perhaps just be grateful that the prize was not won by the Thatcher book.