Wednesday 6 February 2008

RNA Awards Lunch 2008


What a lovely day! Having had to get up at stupid o'clock in order to be able to park at Cambridge station, I arrived at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington High Street in plenty of time to help turn
this



into this.
















In no time at all - or so it seemed - we were having pre-lunch drinks, toasting the shortlisted Romance Prize authors


and the Romantic Novel of the Year finalists







and then there was lunch and catching up and more catching up and then Trisha Ashley awarded the Romance Prize 2008 to Kate Hardy for Breakfast at Giovanni's.
Once the ecstatic applause for that had died down (and Kate made a speech which brought a lump to everyone's throats), we moved on to the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Comedienne Helen Lederer
had us laughing within seconds of taking the microphone. She then summed up all the shortlisted books before announcing that the winner for 2008 was Freya North with Pillow Talk.



Two wonderful books. Two worthy winners.

3 comments:

Kate Hardy said...

Thank you, Jan. Lovely as always to see you. And you always do us proud!

Jan Jones said...

Lovely to see you too, honey. And Breakfast at Giovanni's is a fab book and I'm so pleased it won.

The room looked MUCH grander than it shows on the photos. Sigh.

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

It sounds like a wonderful event, as usual. I'm just sorry I couldnt make it this year but look forward to seeing everyone at Chichester.