British writer Jonathan Tel has struck gold for a second time with his short story, The Human Phonograph.

His tale of a couple living on a remote Chinese nuclear base during the 1960s won the Commonwealth short story prize last year. Now it's earned him the Sunday Times EFG short story award and a cheque for £30,000.

The holder of a doctorate in theoretical physics, he published his novel The Red Cabbage Café in 1990 under the name of Jonathan Treitel.

A couple of his stories appeared in an anthology of Anglo-Jewish writing edited by Bryan Cheyette.

One of them, Shaking Hands with Theodor Herzl, was reprinted in Arafat's Elephant in 2002, his collection of stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by which time he was writing as Jonathan Tel.