LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Author J.K. Rowling won the award for outstanding achievement in the arts from the South Bank Show on Tuesday in recognition of the Harry Potter series, which ended last year with the seventh and final instalment.

The 42-year-old joins previous winners including actress Helen Mirren, playwright Harold Pinter and rock band The Who.

Sheffield band the Arctic Monkeys, nominated in a record seven categories by NME music magazine this week, won the pop award for their second album "Favourite Worst Nightmare".

They beat Radiohead, whose "In Rainbows" album hit the headlines last year when it was released online on a "pay-what-you-want" basis and still made number one in Britain and the United States when the CD hit the shelves.

Shane Meadows' social drama film "This is England" won the movie category, triumphing over "Control", the critically acclaimed biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, and "Atonement", the Oscar-nominated adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel.

Mohsin Hamid won the literature prize for "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", the Booker-nominated story of a high-flying New York businessman who is treated with suspicion and hostility by Americans after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The award winners were:

- Film: This Is England

- Comedy: Gavin and Stacey (BBC 3)

- TV Drama: The Mark of Cain (Channel 4)

- Theatre: Saint Joan (National Theatre)

- Pop: Arctic Monkeys ("Favourite Worst Nightmare")

- Literature: Mohsin Hamid ("The Reluctant Fundamentalist")

- Classical Music: "Traced Overhead: The Musical World of Thomas Ades" (Barbican)

- Visual Arts: Andy Goldsworthy (Yorkshire Sculpture Park)

- Opera: "The Turn of The Screw" (English National Opera)

- Dance: "Morphoses" (The Wheeldon Company at Sadler's Wells)

- Arts Council England - decibel Award: Daljit Nagra ("Look We Have Coming To Dover!")

- The Times Breakthrough Award: Jennifer Pike

- Outstanding Achievement Award: J.K. Rowling