Booker bingo winner is Julian Barnes | Readable, worthy or both?

Congratulations to Julian Barnes for winning this year’s Booker. It was his fourth shortlisting – so you can sympathise with him when he described it as “posh people’s Bingo”.

During BBC2's Newsnight interview he responded to the debate over the quality of this year’s shortlist by saying “Jane Austen – what is she if not readable?”

The Booker isn’t just Bingo, of course, it is a cultural frontline. It is one of the few nationally recognised prizes the truly eggheaded claim to be their own and - like The Proms and Book at Bedtime - they are damn well not about to give it up.

Jeanette Winterson, who dismissed the event not as Posh Bingo but “The Best Pony in Show row”, wrote in the Guardian that Ali Smith’s book There But For The ‘is a wonderful, word-playful novel, ignored by the judges this year because it doesn't fit their idea of "readable"’

Winterson's argument is heartfelt, if a little bizarre. She has the grump that the Booker chairman this year, Stella Rimginton, is a former head of Britain's spies. She was an odd choice -- Rimington's books are hardly literary. And there were comments by the judges: Susan Hill saying she didn't mind experimentation if it came from genius, Chris Mullin saying books should 'zip along'. For the true literati, these were ominous utterings that bordered on Richard&Judyism.

As if books were meant to be enjoyed! Tsk. You must read a book that makes your head hurt and your stomach churn, otherwise you are just wasting your time and might as well be listening to MoneyBox on Radio Four.

And then of course, so many early favourites didn't make the shortlist. Alan Hollinghurst and Smith were the most notable. Talk of a new Literary Award to rival the Booker grew out of this rebellion -- but don't hold your breath. There is more to mounting a lit award than a few agents and publishers moaning about quality. There's money for one thing.

But ultimately, what use is the Booker?

Below is a list of past winners. I'm struck by how few I've read (reflecting perhaps my chippy northerner habit of not reading what I'm told but reading something else I just fancy the look of). I wonder though how many of them will be considered worthy of consideration ten or fifteen years from now.

One issue I've long had with the Booker, which hasn't been mentioned this year, is the fact it is limited to British and Commonwealth writers. Canadians feature but not Americans. Indians but not French. It is the last bastion of Empire.

For any award that claims to be about what is best in literature this strikes me as a surprising flaw. I can understand limiting it to English language novels... but many of the best writers in the last 20 years have been from the US.

So my question is this: how relevant is the Booker? And how many of the Booker winners will you feature on your top ten for our Top100Books list?

Man Booker prize, complete list of winners

1969 – Something to Answer For, P.H. Newby

1970 – The Elected Member, Bernice Rubens

1971 – In a Free State, V. S. Naipaul

1972 – G, John Berger

1973 – The Siege of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell

1974 – The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer

Holiday, Stanley Middleton (shared)

1975 – Heat and Dust, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

1976 – Savile, David Storey

1977 – Staying On, Paul Scott

1978 – The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch

1979 – Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald

1980 – Rites of Passage, William Golding

1981 – Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

1982 – Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Keneally

1983 – Life & Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee

1984 – Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner

1985 – The Bone People – Keri Hulme

1986 – The Old Devils, Kingsley Amis

1987 – Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively

1988 – Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

1989 – The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

1990 – Possession: A Romance, A. S. Byatt

1991 – The Famished Road, Ben Okri

1992 – The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth (shared)

1993 – Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle

1994 – How late it was, how late, James Kelman

1995 – The Ghost Road, Pat Barker

1996 – Last Orders, Graham Swift

1997 – The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

1998 – Amsterdam, Ian McEwan

1999 – Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee

2000 – The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

2001 – True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey

2002 – Life of Pi, Yann Martel

2003 – Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre

2004 – The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst

2005 – The Sea, John Banville

2006 – The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai

2007 – The Gathering, Anne Enright

2008 – The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

2009 – Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

2010 – The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson

2011 – The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

BOOKER FACTS:

“Lost Man Booker Prize” – 1970 – Troubles, J. G. Farrell (awarded in 2010 by public

vote to a 1970 novel, as a rules alteration that year meant books published that year were not eligible for the 1970 award)

“Booker of Bookers” awarded in 1993 to 1981 winner (Midnight’s Children, Salman

Rushdie), title of best winner in award’s first 25 years

“The Best of the Booker” awarded by public vote in 2008 to the same book, to

celebrate the award’s 40th anniversary

Peter Carey and J. G. Coetzee are the only authors to have won twice

Three winners have gone onto win the Nobel prize for literature – Nadine Gordimer in

1991, V. S. Naipaul in 2001, J. M. Coetzee in 2003

Several winning books have been made into film adaptations: Schindler’s Ark

(Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List), The Remains of the Day and The English

Patient.

Schindler’s List and The English Patient both went onto win an Academy

Award for Best Picture

Man Booker International prize established in 2005, awarded bi-annually to a writer

2005 – Ismail Kadare

2007 – Chinua Achebe

2009 – Alice Munro

2011 – Philip Roth