The award ceremony has taken place at a number of different venues over the years including Drapers Hall, Claridges, Guildhall, the Royal Horticultural Halls, and the British Library. In this timeline you'll see a few examples of invitations to the prestigious event.
The year after John Berger's controversial acceptance speech, J. G. Farrell also used his speech to criticise the sponsor - announcing that he was 'no more enamoured of capitalism than my predecessor'. By this time, Booker appears to be taking such comments in their stride and with little offense as the Archive shows he was invited to a post-victory dinner with the sponsor.
1980 was the year that two literary heavyweights were pitted against each other in the shortlist - William Golding with his novel 'Rites of Passage', and Anthony Burgess with 'Earthly Powers'. Martyn Goff, the prize administrator of the time, recalls that Burgess insisted that he would not attend the ceremony unless he was the winner. Goff had the unhappy job of telephoning him at the Savoy Hotel to tell him he hadn't won, and true to his word Burgess stayed put.
In 1982, the winning novel, 'Schindler's Ark' by Thomas Keneally, was the subject of a great debate about whether it was a work of fact or fiction. Whichever it is, the decision to award it the prize stands, but you can check out the debate in the press cuttings and make up your own mind.
In 1983 Chair of Judges Fay Weldon used an autocue to give her speech at the award ceremony. It was highly critical of the publishing industry and as Fay recalls, in an interview with the Sunday Herald, she was 'making this anti-publisher speech and calling them to order. Well, usually in a speech like that, you say all of that first, and then in the last bit you say, 'But of course none of this applies to any of you here, who are all honourable, honourable people.' But, oddly enough, the unions, who I was supporting vigorously, were on a work to rule, and cut the power at 10 o'clock, and the boards went black, just before I got to the 'you are all honourable men' bit. And so because you are reading it, you don't know where you are, so I just sat down and said, 'That is really all I have to say.' So they didn't get that bit. And they were so incensed. And the head of the publishing union came over and hit my agent. It was a wonderful evening!' The Archive has a transcript of the speech in full for those who would like to see how it ended.
Special prizes were created for the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize - the 'Booker of Bookers' and the 'Best of Booker' respectively. Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' won both, but it wasn't an easy victory - a press release announcing the 'Booker of Bookers' winner shows that the judges were torn between Rushdie and William Golding's 'Rites of Passage'.
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a one-off prize to honour books published in 1970 that were not considered for the prize due to a change in submission dates. It was awarded posthumously to J. G. Farrell for his novel 'Troubles'. The shortlist was chosen by Rachel Cooke, Katie Derham, and Tobias Hill. The winning book was voted for by the reading public via the Man Booker Prize website.
Four authors have won the prize twice: J. G. Farrell (1973 and Lost Man Booker); J. M. Coetzee (1983 and 1999); Peter Carey (1988 and 2001); and Hilary Mantel (2009 and 2012). Hilary Mantel won with the first two novels in her proposed trilogy on Thomas Cromwell - will she make it a hat trick with the third?
A few statistics: Over the past 49 years of the Booker Prize, 33% of winners and 38% of shortlisted authors have been women. 43% of judges have been women. Of the 17 female winners, 8 were from the UK, 2 from New Zealand, 2 from India, 1 from South Africa, 1 from Canada, 1 from Ireland, 2 had dual UK nationality (Germany and Ireland). Interestingly, increasing the number of female judges is no guarantee of an increase in the number of female authors shortlisted: in 1977 there was only one female judge but 4 out of 6 shortlisted authors were women; and in 1986 4 out of 5 judges were women, but only one female author was shortlisted.
