Martha Whittome obituary

Martha Whittome helped to transform the TS Eliot prize-giving from a small event into an annual literary gathering that now fills the Royal Festival Hall. Photograph: none

My friend and former colleague Martha Whittome, who has died aged 89, worked in the 1980s and 90s at the Poetry Book Society, where she played an important role in running the annual TS Eliot prize, which began in 1993 and is given to the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or Ireland.

The Poetry Book Society was set up in 1953 by Eliot to send subscribing members a selected volume of new poetry. Forty years on, the TS Eliot prize seemed a fitting anniversary event, and Martha was in at its creation.