A FORMER farm labourer who never wrote anything longer than a postcard until his late thirties has been shortlisted alongside prize-winning writers for the £25,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

After a ten-year struggle to write his first novel, Richard Collins, 48, from Aberystwyth, was staggered to find yesterday that it had been placed on a list with this year’s winner of the Man Booker prize, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty.

Also in the running for the award are Louis de Bernières, best known as the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and Kate Atkinson, who won the Whitbread in 1996 with her first novel.

Collins said: “The whole thing is very scary. I’m an ordinary guy. I’m used to thinking of myself as ordinary.”

The writers were chosen from 450 entries for a prize that was established in 1971 to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.

If Collins wins, he will be following in the footsteps of the Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, the former Poet Laureate, and Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Booker in 1989. There are four nominees in five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. The winner of each section, to be chosen on January 5, receives £5,000 and is put forward for the overall prize, to be announced on January 25.

Collins’s book, The Land as Viewed by the Sea, is a dream-like meditation on land and sea, about two friends who work together on a smallholding. One allows the other to read the novel he is writing, which also bears the title of Collins’s book. As the novel unfolds, fiction begins to intrude upon reality, redefining the friends’ relationship, and threatening to change their lives.

The judges, including Roy Hattersley, a former Cabinet minister, and Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, described it as a “dark-hearted love story . . . a gripping tale that unfolds with immense narrative skill”.

The author, the son of a bus driver and chauffeur, left school after A levels, finding jobs doing gardening and on farms. From an early age, he read Hardy and Lawrence but recalls that “creativity wasn’t encouraged” at his school in Kingston upon Thames.

What he describes as “a creative impulse” eventually inspired him to put down his tools used for dry-stone walling, hedge-laying and treefelling in exchange for a fountain pen, building a timber writing shed in his garden.

He told The Times yesterday: “I tried to write a novel ten years ago. I couldn’t do it. It was too hard. I left it for quite a few years. I tried again in 2001. I just wanted to write. The first time it was like trying to build a house without knowing how to lay bricks. I did a lot of reading and thinking. I was reading in a different way. There were also many years of staring into the distance daydreaming.”

He sent it to a publisher, Seren Books, a small independent press in Bridgend, Wales, where the fiction editor, Will Atkins, was immediately captivated by it. “I was astonished it was a first novel,” Mr Atkins said. “It combines modesty and erudition and has a beautiful, lyrical voice. You can tell he knows the land.”

Collins said: “I’m delighted that such small publishers exist, that someone who is a complete beginner, untried and not from a highly educated background, can have a chance.” Although he continues to work part-time, teaching farming and estate skills, he has already completed a second novel.

THE WHITBREAD SHORTLIST

Kate Atkinson

Case Histories, the story of a jealous husband who suspects his wife, two spinsters who make a shocking find and a solicitor who investigates an old murder.

Judges: “A daring and entirely successful foray into crime writing.”

Louis de Bernières

Birds Without Wings, the story of a small community in South West Anatolia where Christians and Muslims have coexisted peacefully over the centuries.

Judges: “An intensely readable tale.”

Alan Hollinghurst

The Line of Beauty, a novel about Thatcherism and gay sex.

Judges: “Devastatingly funny, exquisitely written.”

Andrea Levy

Small Island, a story set in 1940s England, shortly after the war.

Judges: “Consistently surprising and pleasurable.”

FIRST NOVEL AWARD

Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a fantasy epic about magicians in Victorian England.

Judges: “Truly original, intricately inventive.”

Richard Collins

The Land as Viewed from the Sea, a meditation on land and sea.

Judges: “Gripping tale that unfolds with immense narrative skill.”

Susan Fletcher

Eve Green, about eight-year-old Evie who is sent to a new life in rural Wales.

Judges: “A very beautiful novel.”

Panos Karnezis

The Maze, about a retreating Greek brigade that has lost its way story set in Anatolia in 1922, and is pursued by a Turkish army that seeks to avenge three years of Greek occupation.

Judges: “A book that remains with the reader long after they have finished.”

WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD

John Guy My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots.

David McKie Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Rogue

John Sutherland Stephen Spender

Jeremy Treglown V.S. Pritchett: A Life.

POETRY AWARD

Leontia Flynn These Days
John Fuller Ghosts
Matthew Hollis Ground Water
Michael Symmons Roberts Corpus

CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD

Anne Cassidy Looking for JJ
Geraldine McCaughrean Not the End of the World
Meg Rosoff How I Live Now
Ann Turnbull No Shame, No Fear, an historical novel

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