The Man Booker dinner is the most sought-after ticket in the literary world. Sameer Rahim reports from the evening when Julian Barnes finally won the prize.
The Man Booker dinner is the most sought after ticket in the books calendar. Last night former winners like Howard Jacobson and Kazuo Ishiguro rubbed shoulders with the actor John Hurt and the BBC’s Alan Yentob. Yet while literary London used it as an opportunity to catch up (“Darling, we must have cocktails next week” – I swear that is a direct quote) the nominated authors were quietly sweating in their tuxedos or dresses.
All the talk was about whether this year’s prize had lost its traditional highbrow status. The tables at the front end of the Guildhall, where the nominated authors sat with their publishers, didn’t think so – though there was some muttering from the authors and agents further back, whose friends and clients the judges had ignored.
Oddly enough even people with strong opinions seemed not to have read the whole shortlist – or even much of it. More than one person told me that apart from Julian Barnes, Patrick deWitt and Carol Birch they hadn’t found much to interest them. Either this shows how little excitement the shortlist has provoked or as Stella Rimington, the chairman of the judges, has argued, it shows up the narrowness of “so-called literary critics” and their ilk.
In previous years the prize has been announced at the end of the ten o’clock news meaning there was a three-hour wait between the start of dinner and the acceptance speech. Thankfully for the guests and mercifully for the authors this year the announcement was brought forward to 9.45, leaving plenty of time to escape to the publishers’ parties.
Usually the chairman will give a short generous speech about the difficulty of deciding between so many excellent books. This year Rimington gave a longer speech than usual which, in keeping with the chat around this year’s prize, focused much more on the judges than on the books they had chosen. Dropping in that she had studied English at Edinburgh University, she quoted Alexander Pope and FR Leavis in support of her unorthodox list – one based on quality, not reputation she insisted. Amid the cheers there were groans from my table.
While Barnes was whisked away to the press conference with a cheque for £50,000 in his pocket, his long career finally crowned with what is (still) our most prestigious book prize, the five losing authors sat quietly clapping in their seats. Getting on the Booker shortlist was probably beyond their dreams when they started writing; but having been built up by the judges it must have felt like a long way down.
