PJE's Booker Blog: December 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011

Booker 2012: Even Posher Bingo?

The judges for the 2012 Man Booker Prize have been announced, they are:

Dinah Birch, literary critic, editor of The Oxford Companion to English Literature

and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool.

Amanda Foreman, historian, broadcaster and writer, best known for her biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

.

Bharat Tandon, academic, writer and reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement and The Daily Telegraph.

...and the actor Dan Stevens, who played Nick Guest in the TV adaptation of The Line of Beauty

and is now one of the stars of ITV's posh-fest period drama Downton Abbey

. He is also 'Editor-at-Large' of the online magazine The Junket.

Chairing their discussions will be Sir Peter Stothard, editor of The Times Literary Supplement. On his appointment Sir Peter said that he looked forward to "a year as a reader and critic within its great traditions."

Ah good! The 'great tradition' of the Booker Prize being lots of controversy, yes? *Rubs hands together*

Sameer Rahim in the Telegraph notes that Dan Stevens studied literary criticism under Bharat Tanon at Cambridge University and asks whether this is the first case of one judge having previously taught another. Could be. Another question that would take more research than I can be bothered with, is whether that Dan Stevens is the youngest judge ever, since he will only turn thirty a few days before the panel choose their winner on October 16th. *Tuts* I'm also tempted to suggest that, judging by the cover of The Line of Beauty DVD