Paul Torday (/ˈtɔːrdeɪ/; 1 August 1946 – 18 December 2013)[1] was a British writer and the author of the comic novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
The book was the winner of the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing[2] and was serialised on BBC Radio 4.
Born in 1946 in Croxdale, County Durham,[1] and educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle and Pembroke College, Oxford, Torday turned to fiction writing only later in life, and his first novel was published at the age of 59.
His second novel, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce (titled Bordeaux in the United States), is about a man who drinks himself to death.
The family decided to set up this new prize in Torday's honour in 2019, celebrating first novels by authors aged 60 or over.