What Was Lost Was Lost" was the winner in the first novel category of the Costa Book Awards. O'Flynn received a £5,000 prize. It was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. The Costa Book Awards' judging panel, chaired by Joanna Trollope, praised the novel for "blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery." They described the novel as inventive, compelling, and poignant. "What Was Lost" was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. It was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It won the Jelf Group First Novel Award
P. H. Newby is credited with increasing the amount of Classical music on the station without the need for controversial changes to schedules. His first novel, "A Journey into the Interior", was published in 1946. He then returned to England to write. In the same year he was given an Atlantic Award in literature, and two years thence he received the Somerset Maugham Prize. In 1947, John Lehmann published Newby's boys' adventure story "The Spirit of Jem" with 41 line drawings and a colour dust wrap by Keith Vaughan. He was appointed a CBE for his work as Managing Director of BBC Radio.