LONDON The British poet Ted Hughes, who died last year, on Tuesday became the first writer to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award twice, and the first also to win it both consecutively and posthumously. Birthday Letters, which for the first time revealed his feelings after the suicide of his first wife poet Sylvia Plath 35 years ago, was declared the winner of the 21,000-pound ($34,000) prize.

He also won the prize in 1998 for his translation of Tales From Ovid. Birthday Letters is a collection of poems, all but two of which focus on his life with Plath. It was the former British poet laureate's last publication before his death last year aged 68 from cancer. Unusually for a book of poetry, it topped the bestseller lists when it was published.

It became the fastest selling collection of poetry in Britain this century, selling 150,000 hardback copies. Earlier this month it won the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry. Chairman of the nine-strong judging panel Raymond Seitz said, People were conscious it was a posthumous award, they were conscious he had won last year and they were conscious that maybe this was a sentimental favorite.

But I just want to assure you that the discussion around the us. The judges had rewarded The Beauty of Expression, he said. His daughter Frieda, from his marriage to Plath, collected the prize on her father's behalf. (AFP)