Celebrated Irish author Colm Tóibín was announced yesterday as the winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature.

The writer behind acclaimed books such as Brooklyn and The Master received £40,000 for the biennial award that recognises a living writer from the UK or Ireland for their achievements in literature.

"When I attended the inaugural reception for the David Cohen Prize in London in 1993, I did not imagine for a moment that my own writing would ever be honoured in this way," said Tóibín on receiving the award previously given to Séamus Heany and Edna O'Brien.

"Those who have won the Prize in the past are artists whose work I revere. I am proud to be among them."

Chair of the judging panel, Hermoine Lee, enthused about his work saying, that she thinks of him "as a Renaissance man who can do almost everything with equal brilliance.

He's a novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, travel-writer, critic, teacher, journalist and activist for gay rights."

"A truly international figure, and a watchful historian of our times, he's a beautiful writer of loss and grief, silence and quietness. He writes with the intensity of a poet and the lyric rhythms of a musician. I have never missed a book by him and every book of his I've read has been a revelation. He's one of the essential writers of our times."

Tóibín also presented the Clarissa Luard Award to Padraig Regan. The Clarissa Luard Award was founded in 2005 by Arts Council England in memory of a much-loved literature officer, Clarissa Luard.

Reagan has written the likes of Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017) and Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016).