There is more to life than 'tit for tat' politics

[Peikko 1,575]

Hilary Mantel, the winner of the 2009 Booker prize for Wolf Hall. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

She was the bookies' favourite, the people's favourite and tonight Hilary Mantel became the judges' favourite as Wolf Hall, her vividly told tale of Tudor intrigue, emerged triumphant at the Man Booker prize.

By the end of their three-hour meeting today the Booker judges were split three-two in favour of Mantel's fly-on-the-wall account of the life of Henry VIII's fixer, Thomas Cromwell.

Although it was not a unanimous decision, Jim Naughtie, the BBC broadcaster who chaired this year's judging panel, said all five were happy to name it the winner. He said: "Our decision was based on the sheer bigness of the book, the boldness of its narrative and scene-setting, the gleam that there is in its detail."

Wolf Hall had been one of the hottest favourites in years with, according to Ladbrokes, 80% of all bets on the winner. Some thought being so heavily backed might even count against it, as no bookmakers' favourite had won since Yann Martel's The Life of Pi in 2002.

The prize seemed to follow the script, which read: it is Mantel's year and about time too. She is one of the most highly regarded and under-rewarded – in terms of prizes – novelists working in Britain today, and it surprised many that this was her first time on the Booker shortlist. She admitted to the Guardian this week that winning "would provide freedom from having to win the Booker".

The novelist was given the trophy at London's Guildhall, along with a £50,000 cheque and a guaranteed leap in worldwide sales.

Her victory is all the more impressive because this year's shortlist was widely seen as one of the strongest in years and included former winners JM Coetzee and AS Byatt.

Naughtie said he thought the "ridiculous" odds of 16-1 originally given to Wolf Hall when the longlist was announced probably led to the betting bonanza. After the shortlist was announced the novel became easily the fastest seller, accounting for 45% of all the shortlisted books' sales, according to Amazon, although Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger has sold more overall.

Naughtie said the voting process had been spirited and friendly. "There was no blood on the carpet. We parted good friends."

He said they were anxious not to reach a compromise verdict and Wolf Hall was most certainly not that.

"When we gathered this morning none of us knew which book was going to win," he said. "I think we all felt exhausted at the end of the process but there was real feeling that we had found a book that was worthy of the prize."

Wolf Hall is the longest book on the list and, according to Naughtie, "it demands hard work – nothing wrong with that – but if you give it the attention it deserves it will give you enormous rewards."

All the shortlisted authors were in London for the ceremony apart from Coetzee, who has built a reputation as a pathologically private writer by declining to give interviews and not turning up to award dinners. He has won two Bookers, for Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, and a win this year would have made him the only triple winner.

If Byatt had won for The Children's Book, she would have become only the third double winner, along with Coetzee and Peter Carey.

The other shortlisted novelists were Waters, Simon Mawer for The Glass Room and Adam Foulds for The Quickening Maze.

This year's winner emerged from a total of 132 books read by the judges. The others on the panel were the comedian and broadcaster Sue Perkins, writer and critic Lucasta Miller, Sunday Telegraph journalist Michael Prodger and academic and Guardian columnist John Mullan.

It was such a strong year that six former winners – Margaret Attwood, John Banville, Anita Brookner, Kazuo Ishiguro, Thomas Keneally and Penelope Lively – failed even to make the longlist.

Link

[Danno 1,228]

MC, I admire your change of subject here but really.... if you are gonna post a pic of a woman THAT BIG, she really should be "hot" and in her undies (This is off topic ya know).

[Peikko 1,575]

Quite

However, back to the actual point of the thread, the Booker prize for literature, not titties.

[Peikko 1,575]

Does no one read any more?

[Pooky 3,781]

Quite

However, back to the actual point of the thread, the Booker prize for literature, not titties.

I hate to say, but you did start it with the thread title.

Danno has supplied the tat, so I'll supply the tits ...

Tits

Edited October 6, 2009 by Pooky

[The_Dude 1,142]

Quite

However, back to the actual point of the thread, the Booker prize for literature, not titties.

I hate to say, but you did start it with the thread title.

Danno has supplied the tat, so I'll supply the tits ...

But Danno is quite a ####### himself, so couldn't he have provided both?