Competitions

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED   Making Her Self Up: Frida Kahlo   In celebration of the release of You are Always With Me: Letters to Mama we are giving you the chance to win two tickets to the V&A exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up.   We have a pair of tickets and a […]

    DAPHNE DU MAURIER AT SOMERSET HOUSE​   Rebecca’s 80th birthday celebrations continue: Somerset House are showing Hitchcock’s adaptation as part of their Film Four Summer Screen season. Is there a more perfect summer evening for fans of Hitchcock and du Maurier? We can’t think of one.   ‘Last night I dreamt I went […]

  There is nothing better than receiving a good book, except perhaps giving one in return. So this festive period, we are giving you the chance to win two copies of Marriage by Susan Ferrier simply by snapping a picture of any Virago book you receive this winter – one copy for you and one for the person […]

  This November we are reading Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women. One of the most endearingly amusing English novels of the twentieth century – Alexander McCall Smith Mildred Lathbury is one of those ‘excellent women’ who is often taken for granted. She is a godsend, ‘capable of dealing with most of the stock situations of life – […]

    Our Book of the Month for September is a witty and touching classic: The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns. ‘A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities – its darkness, its strangeness, its humour, its sadness, its startling images and twists […]

  A childhood favourite that deserves a re-read. ‘Oh, it seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you and belong to you. I’ve never belonged to anybody’ When a scrawny, freckled girl with bright red hair arrives on Prince Edward Island, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are taken by surprise; they’d asked for a […]

  This July marks fifty years since the creation of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which decriminalized homesexual acts between men in England and Wales, and birthed the modern LGBTQ movement in Britain. With Pride Festival kicking off on Saturday 24th June, there couldn’t be a better time to shed some light on this […]

To celebrate publication of In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant, we’ve teamed up with Ponti’s Italian Kitchen to offer one Virago reader the chance to win dinner at their restaurant in London or Sheffield. The prize includes dinner for the reader and a guest, a bottle of Ponti’s homemade limoncello and a signed hardback […]

This Mother’s Day (UK: Sunday 26th March 2017), we’re giving you the chance to win a mug and notebook set of your choosing from the Virago Modern Classic Gift range and a £25 voucher from The Literary Gift Company. To enter, simply share a photo of your favourite Virago book and brew on Twitter or […]

Atwood fans, assemble! This year, Margaret Atwood has been awarded the highly prestigious PEN Pinter Prize – awarded annually to to a writer who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Literature Prize speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world’ and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination…to define the real truth of our lives and […]

We are delighted to announce that Virago author, Marilynne Robinson, has been shortlisted for the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award, with Lila – published in paperback in 2015.   The International DUBLIN Literary Award is presented annually for a novel written in English or translated into English. The award aims to promote excellence in world […]