Strindberg: a Life won the 2012 Duff cooper Prize for non-fiction and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012 and the Sheridan Morley Prize 2012.

Ian McEwan, Ian Rankin and Sue Prideaux at the James Tait Black Memorial Prizegiving at Edinburgh, July 2006. Ian McEwan won the fiction prize for his novel Saturday, Sue Prideaux the biography prize for Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream and Ian Rankin presented the prizes. The James Tait Black is the oldest literary prize in the United Kingdom.