The winner of the prestigious Mercury Prize for 2011 has been announced and it has been awarded to PJ Harvey. The artist has won the prize for the second time in her career for her material Let England Shake.

In order to win the prestigious prize the artist had to see off some of the biggest names in the UK music business. Other nominees for the award were Adele, Katy B, James Blake, Anna Calvi, Elbow, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Everything Everything, Ghostpoet, Metronomy, Gwilym Simcock and the popular Tinie Tempah. Before the awards had even begun PJ Harvey had been heavily placed as the favourite to be presented with the prize for 2011.

PJ Harvey has now broken a record after being presented with the prize, she has become the first every artist to be given the prize twice. She first won the prize in 2001 for her album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. A decade on the artist continues to have a major influence within the UK music markets.

A decade ago when she won the prize PJ Harvey was unable to pick up the award due to her getting caught in Washington DC during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The artist revealed she was very thankful to be able to pick up the prize this time around. She described the events of 2011 as a really strange and surreal day.

The artist believes that the material she has released perfectly fits with the times we are in. She described the record as being a very difficult one and for this reason she was very thankful she had been recognised with Mercury Prize for it.

The head of the judging panel Simon Firth revealed that the prize was given to the artist as she has taken an album and turned it into an art form; this is something that not everybody can do. The lyrics to the songs were described as truly brilliant and the songs were described as great.

At the award ceremony many music artists paid respected to the artist stating she had been a great inspiration to the work which they produce.