New Yorker music critic Alex Ross has just been named the winner of this year’s Guardian First Book Award, for his kaleidoscopic music history tome The Rest is Noise. The prize is worth a cool £10,000.

According to The Guardian:

The chair of the judging panel, Guardian literary editor Claire Armistead, said: “In some quarters this book has been seen as not having a popular appeal. Our prize “ which, uniquely, relies on readers’ groups in the early stages of judging “ proves that, on the contrary, there is a huge appetite among readers for clear, serious but accessible books.”