Article #80351

May We Feed the King, about a museum curator and a medieval monarch, was praised by judges for its ‘crisp, cool prose’ and ‘poet’s eye for detail’

Author and poet Rebecca Perry has won the 2026 Waterstones debut fiction prize for May We Feed the King, praised as a “delicious and dream-like tale”.

Chosen from a shortlist of six novels, May We Feed the King follows a present-day curator whose job is to dress rooms in historic houses. (“When you see a replica feast scene in the great hall of an old building, I am the person who placed the pomegranates beside the pie.”) They become increasingly obsessed by the subject of their latest commission, a medieval king whose own story about his reluctance to rule unfolds in parallel.