Julian Barnes has called it 'posh bingo' but the Man Booker Prize also has a history of bust-ups and disorder
Julian Barnes at Hay Cartagena 2013 Photo: Gaby Wood
Julian Barnes, a former winner of the Man Booker Prize, once described the selection process as "posh bingo".
The decision to jettison Alan Hollinghurst from 2011's shortlist prompted hand-wringing and garrulity ("the Booker can drive people quite mad," Hollinghurst later said) but it was just another chapter in the story of a prize with a rich and joyously barmy history of disorder.
Since its inception in 1969, judges have bitched – in public – and there has been gossip and complaint about good novels being discarded by dumb assessors. The Booker book of bruised egos would be very large.
Barnes had been shortlisted three times before eventually winning. After missing out with his novel Flaubert’s Parrot in 1984, he recalled: "I was introduced after the ceremony to one of the judges, who said to me: ‘I hadn’t even heard of this fellow Flaubert before I read your book. But afterwards I sent out for all his novels in paperback.’ This comment provoked mixed feelings."
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