Man Booker Prize event at the British Library

On 17 October 2011, the Man Booker Prize hosted a one-off event to show its support for UK libraries at the British Library.

12 October 2011

On 17 October 2011, the Man Booker Prize hosted a one-off event to show its support for UK libraries at the British Library. The event was chaired by Tony Durcan OBE, Director of Culture, Libraries & Lifelong Learning at Newcastle City Council, and featured three of this year's shortlisted authors - Carol Birch, Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller.

Over 200 librarians and library groups from across the UK travelled to London for a chance to hear the shortlisted authors speak about the part libraries had played in their lives, as well as the opportunity to ask the authors about their shortlisted novels. Many of the library groups had travelled some distance to be there, as far flung as Edinburgh, Swansea, Warwickshire, Coventry. There were also guests from the groups shadowing the prize this year - from Redbridge, Calderdale, Swansea, Wandsworth and Knowsley.

Following short introductions from Frances Brindle (British Library) and Jonathan Taylor (Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation), Chair Tony Durcan kicked off the event on a positive note, saying ‎4,100 public libraries and 12 million active library readers is not a library service in crisis.

Stephen Kelman talked about how the local library had been a source of ‘available culture' when he was growing up on a council estate. He said he had decided to become a writer at six years old, an ambition which was inspired by his parents and by his Headteacher, who used to pull him out of class to read Wuthering Heights to her.

Carol Birch said that she had almost taken libraries for granted - her parents used to take her once a week when she was younger and that joining a library when you moved house just seemed as natural registering with a doctor and dentist.

A.D. Miller spoke of how libraries had had different roles for him throughout his life: from his early addiction to Agatha Christie's novels, to his late teens when - with long hair and a Byronic image (of himself) - he would take out Bronte novels from the local library and flirt with girls. He researched his first book, the non-fiction title The Earl of Petticoat Lane, largely in libraries and now that he has young children he's found himself working through the back catalogues of the Mog the Cat books from his local library.

In addition, two of the shortlisted authors who were unable to take part sent messages of support.

Quote from Julian Barnes

"Like most writers of my generation, I grew up with the weekly exchange of library books, and took their pleasures and treasures for granted. The cost of our free public library system is small, its value immense. To diminish and dismantle it would be a kind of national self-mutilation, as stupid as it would be wicked."

Quote from Esi Edugyan

"Libraries have stood at the centre of every community I've lived in. I've moved around a lot as an adult, and libraries remain the hub, the fixed anchor, the thing I hold to. As a child I lived for the library, that wonderful and mysterious space my father took us to each Saturday, where we were free to dream of our very best selves. Libraries have been great sources of consolation for me, places where I could find a community of people utterly different from me and yet fundamentally the same. And that I suppose is what libraries mean to me: a place where differences meet up with similarities, and people can encounter their possible lives between the covers of a book."