Fleetwood Mac star honoured at awards

Christine McVie wrote some of Fleetwood Mac's most famous songs

Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie has been honoured with a lifetime achievement at this year's Ivor Novello songwriting awards.

McVie played with Fleetwood Mac for 28 years and wrote some of their most famous songs, including Don't Stop and Little Lies.

Other winners at Thursday's ceremony in London included London Grammar, The Chemical Brothers and Nile Rodgers.

The annual awards, now in their 59th year, are voted for by songwriters.

Picking up her award, McVie confirmed she had rejoined Fleetwood Mac after a more than 15-year absence and would join them on a world tour.

"We are in the process of making another studio album which should be out next year," she added.

Alt-pop trio London Grammar won the award for best song musically and lyrically for Strong.

Last year's Mercury Prize winner James Blake received the best contemporary song trophy for Retrograde.

"This is amazing," Blake told the BBC backstage, "but the biggest reward in writing music is writing music."

London Grammar beat John Newman and Palma Violets to win the award for best song musically and lyrically

The best album award went to Push the Sky Away by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Cave said: "We don't come to many awards ceremonies but this is the one to get."

The Specials founder Jerry Dammers, who won the inspiration award, recalled when the band won a BBC Radio 1 award in the late 1970s.

"I smashed it up with a hammer when I got home and threw my gold disc out the window, but when I heard about this, I really was very touched."

Referring to his protest song Free Nelson Mandela, he said: "If there any young people here and you feel strongly about something, if you write a song about it you never know where it's going to end up."

Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page presented the award for outstanding contribution to British music to rock guitarist Jeff Beck.

Nile Rodgers was honoured with a special international award

"It's amazing that I'm still here for making such ridiculous noises out of a funny shaped piece of wood and six bits of wire," Beck said.

The award for international achievement went to folk rockers Mumford and Sons.

Tom Odell was named songwriter of the year and Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons - better known as The Chemical Brothers - were honoured for outstanding song collection.

American musician and producer Nile Rodgers was honoured with a special international award.

"I can't believe I get to do this and get paid," said the star, who accepted the award from Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.

"No-one would ever think that The Smiths and Chic had something in common," Rodgers said.

"The truth is... we had more in common with the punk bands than you would ever imagine. Everybody was our friend. We were one big family and I am so honoured to be in this club."

As well as topping the charts with Chic's disco hits in the 1970s, Rodgers has produced classic albums by Diana Ross, Madonna, David Bowie and Duran Duran.

More recently he has played on Daft Punk's album Random Access Memories, including the hit single Get Lucky.

The full list of winners is on the Ivor Novello awards website.