OXFORD critic and biographer John Carey has won one of Britain’s oldest literary awards, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes, following in the footsteps of literary giants such as DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh.

He won the £10,000 prize for his biography William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies, which was named best biography published during the previous 12 months.

Prof Carey, 76, who lives in Headington, said: “I’m enormously pleased and honoured — not just for myself but for William Golding, the subject of my biography.

“He won the fiction section of the prize himself with his novel Darkness Visible in 1979, and I think he would be tickled pink to know he had made it a double.”

Prof Carey retired last year as Oxford University Professor of English Literature, and is a keen beekeeper, producing honey at his country cottage at Shipton-under-Wychwood.

The James Tait is the only major British book award judged by scholars and students. The fiction prize of £10,000 went to AS Byatt for her novel, The Children’s Book.

The winners were announced by crime writer Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Prize judge Prof Colin Nicholson, of the University of Edinburgh, said: “The literary qualities and sheer entertainment value of the work we have been sifting are convincing evidence that fiction and biography of the highest standards are thriving in an evidently buoyant sector of our culture.”

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black.