A SOUGHT-after prize which celebrates the best of non-fiction writing has been awarded by an Oxford college to a book about the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s.

The winner of this year's Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, organised by New College, Oxford, is Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine.

It is the second time the writer has won the award after her book on Gulags was recognised in 2003.

Red Famine is the fullest account ever published of the 1932-33 famine when nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food.

The award, which has been given out annually since 1956, was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and author.

It is judged by five people including the college warden and a member of Duff Cooper's family and his granddaughter, Artemis Cooper, is the current chair of the judging panel.

Speaking about the winner she said: 'In this beautifully-written book, Applebaum takes the reader through one of the most appalling episodes of the Soviet past.

"Not every historian can look with such an unflinching gaze into the depths of evil and human misery, and write about it with such clarity and compassion.'"

The prize of £5,000 was presented to Anne Applebaum at a reception in the French Embassy by the Ministre Conseiller, M. François Revardeaux, representing the French Ambassador.