The Booker Prize Goes Bookish

Tonight, from the annual ceremony at Londonâ??s Guildhall, Julian Barnes was announced as the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner for his novel The Sense of an Ending. Although he was resolutely not talking to the press, I managed to speak to him briefly in the early hours of the morning at a party given by his publisher (Jonathan Cape), as he held a well-deserved cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Despite his much-quoted earlier description of the prize as â??posh bingo,â? the beaming smile on his face betrayed the fact that he was obviously overjoyed by his win. And when I asked him what heâ??d made of all the media attention surrounding this yearâ??s judging process, he told me that while he sat listening to the chairman of the judging panel, Dame Stella Rimington, defending their inflammatory comments premising â??readabilityâ? above all else, he â??felt sure it was going against me.â? I congratulated him on a â??well-deserved winâ? and he commended me my alliteration, smiling profusely all the while.