Hilary Spurling has won the £25,000 (NZ$65,000) Whitbread prize with her biography of Matisse.

It's a surprise finish to the British-based awards: Spurling herself said she was ‘gobsmacked’. She’d had her money elsewhere, as biography is rarely the winner here. Indeed, this is only the fifth bio win in the 21-year history of the Whitbread - the last one to triumph was Claire Tomalin's life of Samuel Pepys in 2002.

Ali Smith was tipped to hit the money this year with her book The Accidental, but after 15 years writing Matisse the Master, A Life of Henri Matisse: Vol II, The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954, Hils is no doubt chuffed.

The chairman of the judges, Michael Morpurgo, is quoted in The Independent as saying:

So many people felt it was a massive work, but yet it didn't read like it. It read like a story. We were reading about this man and his pictures and the life that he had, his family and his travels … It was an extraordinary achievement to write a book that length and you get to the end and you're sorry it's finished.

Want to know more about Matisse? There’s a Guardian review of the book by MOMA’s John Elderfield, from March last year, right here.