Sir Terry Pratchett has been named winner of the 2012 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for his novel Snuff (Doubleday). Praised by The Independent for being 'As funny as Wodehouse and as witty as Waugh', the judges felt it seemed only fitting for him to win a prize that celebrates fiction that captures the comic spirit of P.G. Wodehouse.

The prize includes the naming of a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig after the novel.

This is the first time Pratchett has won the prize, although he has been shortlisted on three previous occasions for his novels Thief of Times (2002),Going Postal (2005) and Thud (2006). As the 13th winner of the prize, he joins previous winners including Paul Torday, Ian McEwan, Marina Lewycka and DBC Pierre in an impressive canon of comic fiction.

Snuff is Terry Pratchett's 50th book and the 39th in the Discworld novels. The book, which sees Commander Sam Vimes investigating a country house murder whilst on holiday, has become one of the fastest-selling hardback novels since records began. AS Byatt, in a review for The Guardian, commented 'Pratchett is a master storyteller... He is a master of complex jokes, good bad jokes, good dreadful jokes and a kind of insidious wisdom about human nature (and other forms of alien nature).'

Peter Florence, a judge of the prize and Director of The Telegraph Hay Festival, comments: 'I am thrilled he's won in this 25th anniversary year of the festival. He's consistently funny, inventive and with an acute, satirical view of the world.'

Terry Pratchett will be presented with the Prize - a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection - at The Telegraph Hay Festival on Wednesday 6 June. 

The judges of the prize were: James Naughtie, broadcaster and author; David Campbell, Everyman's Library publisher and Peter Florence.