Victoria MacKenzie wins Kett’s Books Trevor Ellingworth Award

Kett’s Books, a community bookshop in Wymondham, Norfolk, has awarded its Trevor Ellingworth Award to Victoria MacKenzie, for her novel For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain (Bloomsbury).

Trevor Ellingworth helped to establish the volunteer-run Kett’s Books – which recently won Independent Bookshop of the year for East England – in 2014. The award, which celebrates new writing about East Anglia, was created to celebrate his “long-standing support and loyalty” in 2022.

Mackenzie’s winning novel explores the lives of two medieval mystics from Norfolk, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, from King’s Lynn, who wrote the first known books in English by women.

“Trevor, who sadly passed away in 2023, championed and celebrated writing about East Anglia and its residents,” said Tracy Kenny, manager of Kett’s Books. “For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain brings to life two of Norfolk’s most remarkable women and gives a real insight into 14th-century Norfolk and is a very worthy winner of this year’s Trevor Ellingworth Award.”

MacKenzie was presented with the award on Friday 26th April, and gave a talk at Becket’s Chapel in Wymondham. “It’s an absolute privilege to receive the Ellingworth Award, in honour of someone who valued books and bookshops so highly and who gave so much of his own time to their cause,” she said. “I thank Kett’s Books, and its volunteers, from the bottom of my heart, for recognising my novel, which celebrates the life of two of Norfolk’s most important women writers.”