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Andrea Levy was won the Walter Scott Literary Prize at the Borders Book Festival in Montrose.

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The second Walter Scott prize for historical fiction worth £25,000 has been won by Andrea Levy for her book The Long Song'.

Levy's prize was presented at one of Scotland's top literary festivals ' the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. The evening was hosted by Rory Bremner who is patron of the event and the prize was awarded by the Duke of Buccleuch, event sponsor.

The book covers the emotive and disturbing stories of the once enslaved people of the Caribbean Islands and reflects aspects of Ms. Levy's own British and Caribbean heritage.

'Fiction can, and must, step in where historians cannot go because of the rigour of their discipline,' she said. 'Fiction can breathe life into our lost or forgotten histories.

The event judges praised the work as a celebration of the triumphant human spirit in times of great adversity. 'Andrea Levy brings to this story such personal understanding and imaginative depth that her characters leap from the page, with all the resilience, humour and complexity of real people,' they said.

Other authors taking part in the four-day festival include Sarah Brown, the wife of ex-prime minister Gordon Brown, Larry Lamb, Maureen Lipman, Michael Parkinson, Peter Snow and Rory McGrath.

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