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. B. Lyon P. H. B. Lyon Percy Hugh Beverley Lyon MC (1893–1986) was a 20th-century British poet and educator, a winner of the Newdigate Prize and headmaster of Rugby School from 1931 to 1948. Lyon studied at Oriel College, Oxford, publishing a number of lyrics in "Oxford Poetry" between 1910 and 1914. He interrupted his studies during the First World War, serving as a lieutenant in the Durham Light Infantry and earning the Military Cross. Taken prisoner, he was in Graudenz at the end of hostilities. Upon returning to Oxford after the war, Lyon won the Newdigate Prize in 1919 with his