1. Richard Mabey‘s books include Flora Britannica and Nature Cure comment@guardian.co.uk

2. The woman who made the complaint claimed that she had been an outpatient at the nature–cure clinic in the hospital for 18 months and that her complaints were based on personal experience.

3. The two other contenders are more unusual within the genre: Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters tells the story of an ex–con‘s life in reverse, back to a violent childhood; Richard Mabey‘s Nature Cure is the autobiographical tale of his own clinical depression.

4. Matthew Huntley P&G Wells, Winchester Richard Mabey‘s Nature Cure is a beautifully written memoir full of insights about life and nature and hope for the future –‘to make the heart sing‘. And, destined to become a travel classic, Terry Darlington‘s Narrow Dog to Carcassonne is an irresistibly funny account of taking a narrow boat (and dog) through France, encountering a rich cast of eccentrics along the way.

5. It is a sustained act of invention, but the novel runs against the limits of invention, too." First novel shortlist Tash Aw The Harmony Silk Factory (Harper Perennial) Diana Evans 26a (Chatto & Windus) Peter Hobbs The Short Day Dying (Faber and Faber) Rachel Zadok Gem Squash Tokoloshe (Pan Macmillan) Biography shortlist Nigel Farndale Haw–Haw (Macmillan) Richard Mabey Nature Cure (Chatto & Windus) Alexander Masters Stuart: A Life Backwards (Fourth Estate) Hilary Spurling Matisse the Master (Hamish Hamilton) Poetry shortlist David Harsent Legion (Faber) Christopher Logue Cold Calls (Faber) Richard Price Lucky Day (Carcanet) Jane Yeh Marabou (Carcanet) Children‘s book shortlist Frank Cottrell Boyce Framed (Macmillan) Geraldine McCaughrean The White Darkness (Oxford University Press) Hilary McKay Permanent Rose (Hodder Headline) Kate Thompson The New Policeman (Bodley Head) More business news Guardian Unlimited Money Economic dispatch Useful link Whitbread