The Booker Prize Story
Tracing the origins of the prestigious prize
Sir Michael Caine was Chief Executive of Booker plc from 1975 and later Chairman until his retirement in 1993. Sir Michael died in March 1999. This article has been adapted and updated from a longer article which originally appeared in Logos magazine in 1996.
The Booker Prize can trace its origin, through quirks of history and the imaginativeness of one individual, to James Bond and the attainment of political freedom in Guyana.
The imaginative individual was a Scotsman called Jock Campbell (later Lord Campbell of Eskan) who in 1945 became Managing Director of the Booker company, which then had most of its business in Guyana. A man of enormous energy, intelligence and human understanding, Campbell was deeply conscious of the wrongs and hurts of slavery and the complex relationships of the African and East Indian populations in Guyana.
Jock Campbell, who was an active supporter of independence movements, soon transformed Booker from a typical colonial business into a thriving enterprise esteemed by employees, shareholders and customers. At the same time, realising that an expatriate-owned business producing around 35% of Guyana’s gross domestic product had a limited future, Campbell turned his attention to the UK, where he extended Booker’s business into rum marketing, food distribution, engineering, shipping and other activities.
One day, Jock learned that Ian Fleming, an old friend and golfing partner, had been given not much more than a year to live. Over a drink at the ‘nineteenth hole’, Fleming sought Campbell’s advice about securing his estate for his family by selling his interest in the James Bond novels.
Income tax at that time, at Fleming’s level of income, was almost equivalent to confiscation. Jock recommended a merchant bank, but in his bath next morning thought to himself: ‘Wait a moment. I know a knowledgeable tax accountant and a tax lawyer. Couldn’t Booker make something of this?’ The consequent deal was to the substantial advantage of both Ian Fleming and Booker plc and to the substantial disadvantage of The Exchequer.
This was the beginning of Booker’s ‘Authors’ Division’ which, taking advantage of a loophole in the UK Finance Act, soon added to its portfolio the copyrights of a galaxy of writers, including Agatha Christie, Dennis Wheatley, Georgette Heyer, Robert Bolt and Harold Pinter.
As Tom Maschler relates elsewhere, The Booker Prize took its inspiration from France’s Prix Goncourt. Seventeen years later, Le Figaro referred to the Goncourt as the ‘French Booker’. The wheel had turned full circle. Admittedly, our motives were somewhat different from those of the Prix Goncourt. Jock Campbell had gathered around him a number of young executives who combined their business ambitions with intellectual interest. Jock himself had read widely and voraciously. As a young man, his prowess in solving Torquemada’s crossword puzzles in The Observer led to his being asked by Torquemada’s widow to edit a book of his 112 best puzzles. But the main reasoning was commercial. The investments in the Author’s Division were making very high returns. Also, the further publicity might contribute to publicising Booker’s growing investments in the UK as they withdrew from the developing world.
In the first few years, the prize was sponsored by Booker and the Publishers Association. Although the latter contributed no financial support, its guidance was important in the early days of the prize. From the beginning, the Management Committee was a mixture of Booker nominees and publishers. Gradually, representation became more formal, with two publishers, hardback and paperback; an author; a librarian; a bookseller; plus Booker directors and executives. The Committee’s main tasks were to frame and revise the rules, and to choose the judges each year.
The guiding principles of the prize were simple. First, it would be a cash award (at the start £5,000; today £20,000) for the best novel in the English language, written by a Commonwealth or Irish citizen, and published in the UK. The inclusion of the Commonwealth reflected Booker’s interests. We had, over the years, given financial assistance to Guyanese artists and writers.
Secondly, there would be five judges as a rule, one of whom would be Chairman. Every title submitted would be considered by all the judges. A sieving committee has never been used. Narrowing the entries to potential winners is itself a major task for the judges, which would be reduced if publishers had greater self-criticism. However, judges find it possible quickly to weed out non-starters. The judges were to change each year, so that a wide spectrum of views and interests were secured. I have always been sure that the prize cannot itself be judged on the award of a single year. It has to be evaluated on what it has achieved over a number of years.
The third guiding principle limits each publisher to a fixed number of entries, with judges able to call in a set number of novels which had not been submitted.
In 1971, the administration of the prize transferred to the National Book League (which, since 1986, has been known as Book Trust) with its Director - later, Chairman – Martyn Goff as the Administrator. Martyn has had two contrasting roles. In one he has been the permanent cool centre at Management Committee meetings, raising points for discussion and decision through his wide-reaching antennae in the literary world among authors, publishers, media, critics and academics. He also issues invitations to those whom the Management Committee decide to approach to be judges or chairmen. All of this he has done with great care and sensitivity, although sometimes disconcerted by the procrastination of some of those invited.
Martyn has always attended judges’ meetings, essentially to act as a source of information, especially on the rules. Probably, also, he has helped them to keep to timetables. (No record has ever been taken of the meetings of judges. At one point, the BBC were keen to film the final meeting, when the winner is chosen. The Management Committee decided against such a proposal on the grounds that a fly-on-the-wall camera would affect what the judges said, and perhaps even what they decided.)
Martyn’s second role has been to arouse the interest of journalists and diary columnists in some aspect of the year’s happenings – never saying sufficient to give an official view, but always sufficient to start the journalists hunting the hare.
The Management Committee is responsible for reviewing the rules of the prize. Sometimes a new definition is needed. Early on, some distinction had to be made between a short story, a novella and a novel. At first, we left it to the judges, but later inserted in the rules the phrase that a novel was a ‘substantial and unified work of fiction’. We did leave to the judges any distinction required between ‘fiction’ and ‘faction’, and did not change this after they awarded the prize to Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark in 1982.
Most important, the Committee decides whom to invite as judges and chairman for the following year. My main guidance was to try and have a chairman with a national reputation; who would be acceptable to the other judges; who would be conscientious in his or her duties; and would make a lively and useful speech at the dinner. After the 1982 dinner, we published Professor John Carey’s speech on ‘The State of the Novel’ as a pamphlet. Since then, the dinner has been more social and the after-dinner speeches perhaps more light-hearted.
I was always keen that we should not have unknown people as judges. My greatest anxiety was about the balance of the judges – gender, age, practitioner or critic, Left or Right – and asked that this balance should, when necessary, outweigh the choice of even a highly qualified individual. To widen perspectives, we have included non-UK citizens among the judges. I was always clear that we could never hope for an ideal combination each year, but felt that the selection of judges should achieve a proper balance over a number of years. In the end, the Management Committee always decided relatively easily whom we should invite. We tended not to resort to majority voting. Rather one committee member’s blackball was sufficient to discard a prospect. As Chairman, my view was often decisive between two wholly acceptable suggestions.
At the June meeting of the Management Committee each year, the chairman of the judges has always been a guest, so that he or she could meet the sponsors and be satisfied that the total responsibility for selecting the shortlist and the winning title rested with the judges. I was almost always asked by the new chairman:’ What do you, or what does Booker, seek in the winner?’ My answer was always the same: ‘I hope that some winners will be A level set books in 20 years’ time.’
For many years, following a suggestion by Ian Norrie, then the bookseller member of the Management Committee, the final meeting of the judges has been held on the afternoon of the dinner, so that the chances of leaks are minimised and suspense heightened. Naturally, judges have often disagreed on the winner and I have always welcomed this. I never believed that any novel would receive unanimous support. Such is not the stuff of fiction.
The dinner, in the historic and resplendent Guildhall (now in the British Museum), is the climax of the Booker year. At first the award ceremony was a reception. Then, as its significance and relevance began to appeal nationally and public regard for the standing of the prize increased, the affair became a dinner.
At first, the Management Committee organised both the award procedures and the ceremony. Gradually, the ceremony and its form became a wholly Booker matter. The costs bear this out. In the beginning, the selection process and the prize where 70% of the costs and the ceremony 30%. Over the years, these proportions have been reversed.
Over The Booker Prize’s 30 years, many ancillary issues have arisen. At various times, we considered replicating the prize in other countries. We looked carefully at the US, but concluded that the sheer size was too great and correspondingly expensive. In my view, one of the reasons for our success in the UK has been that the Booker judges have, over the years, been well regarded by the British public. In the US, it would have been difficult with five judges (and more would be unwieldy) to have satisfied the multiplicity of regional, cultural or ethnic interests.
Surprisingly, the replication of The Booker Prize finally took place in 1992, when The Booker Russian Novel Prize was launched with substantial help from the British Council and in particular from John Crowfoot, now secretary of the Russian Management Committee. Seven years on, it does seem to have encouraged Russian writers. Certainly debate on the merits and demerits of Russian fiction has been encouraged.
Foreign media interest, particularly in the Commonwealth, has proved to be a benefit. The most interesting and knowledgeable meeting I ever had on The Booker Prize was in the Macaulay Club in Calcutta. It seems that Indian readers in English have more time – and, perhaps, inclination? – to read books than their counterparts in the UK. We have also been heartened by the fact that The Booker has encouraged similar literary prizes throughout the world – in Europe, America, the Far East and even back in the UK.
A critical year in the publicity for the prize was in 1981, when BBC 2, under the leadership of Brian Wenham, provided the first TV coverage, with Alan Yentob as Producer. This gave The Booker Prize a major boost. It became a topic of conversation at many dinner parties outside Hampstead.
In 1994, the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, on Ion Trewin’s and Gillian Beer’s suggestion, backed an event in which a distinguished literary panel selected the ‘Booker winner’ amongst novels published 100 years earlier. It has since become an annual fixture.
The authors, of course, are the stars, and we have had every reaction from gracious modesty to ideological rejection. I have always been sympathetic to the strain that Booker places on authors by inviting them to a dinner where four or five of them have to handle their disappointment under the television cameras. Television secures powerful publicity. It can also be cruel. The consolation is that Booker expands the sales of every novel shortlisted.
In the 30 years since the prize was launched, the Booker company itself has changed substantially. Yet there has been lasting continuity in much of its approach. Inevitably, my own perspective on The Booker Prize has not always been shared by my colleagues. After my retirement, I saw a comment by a senior executive that the prize was not raising the standard of literature. This was in 1994, when James Kelman’s How Late it Was, How Late was the winner. Raising the standard of novel writing had never crossed my mind. I was merely playing a part in Booker’s efforts to raise awareness of the English-language novel – and of Booker.
I remember another time when a shareholder protested that ‘novels are for entertainment and uplift and should have a happy ending’, and added that ‘Booker should give a prize for novels of the civilised way of life.’ How, I wondered, would Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene have fared, if this were the criterion? However, even Jock Campbell, in his later years, expressed the wish that the modern literary novel had ‘better story-lines’.
My hope for the future is that the prize will continue to draw attention to British and Commonwealth fiction. While a pattern has been established, I hope it will allow further innovation and development. Naturally, there will be changes in the external circumstances and in the management of Booker, the effect of which will, I trust, be increased stature for a prize which has stood the test of time for more than one generation.
Over my years in Booker, there were only two Board decisions regarding the prize. The first, to found the prize, was uncontested. It was seen as imaginative and beneficial to all concerned and struck a strongly sympathetic chord. The second decision was at the end of the first five years, which was the period to which the first decision committed. Costs had grown. After some debate, the Board agreed that the prize should continue although, even then, the benefits to Booker shareholders were difficult to identify or even define.
With the success of the prize, Booker sought to derive maximum benefit from the sponsorship. All agreed that the prestige and adherence to standards achieved by the prize contributed something to the regard in which Booker was held within small elite groups, whether literary, in government or in the City. It was much less clear whether nationally any connection was made between Booker the business and Booker the prize. At times, we wondered whether money should be spent to advertise the connection, but never felt that the results would justify the expenditure, because Booker is not a household name, as it does not sell consumer products under its own name. The prize was seen as a small plus in 1983, when over 80% of the Booker shareholders supported the management against a predatory takeover by the Dee Corporation.
It is never easy to assess what is achieved by sponsorship or prestige advertising. For some, the annual cost of Booker seems small in relation to what other companies spend on arts sponsorship, but that kind of sponsorship is a one-off event. The Booker Prize occurs every year. It’s almost as if an endowment fund of £2m had been established.
We have never been able to prove that our small shareholders in Booker - Aunt Agatha in Newcastle or Uncle Harry in Glasgow – have had conspicuous benefits from our expenditure, but we do have evidence that they are often proud of the connection. I personally believe that companies have many responsibilities. Profit and return for shareholders are paramount, but not all-embracing. The Booker Prize has fulfilled Jock Campbell’s vision of the wider responsibilities of a corporation. And, in the excitement of it all, Booker managers have had fascinating experiences which add to their zest and vigour in the business world.
As Chairman of the Management Committee of the prize for nearly 25 years, I feel that I followed the precepts of Mao Tse-Tung: ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’ and ‘Bend with the wind.’ Fortunately, I have never been angered by criticism of the prize or Booker’s part in it. Perhaps one of the reasons that the prize has earned respect has been that we often leaned a little one way or another in response to criticism, whether from publishers, authors or the media. One point on which I have remained adamant is that we have not been seeking, and will not seek, to recognize or create bestsellers. If that was all we wanted, there would be no need of judges. The Jeffery Archers would win.
When we started The Booker Prize, UK literature looked a bit peaky and down. I think The Booker has cheered it up, made it more vibrant, by spending some money and achieving some publicity. Some do not agree. One of the 1996 judges, A.N. Wilson, wrote in the Evening Standard soon after Graham Swift’s Last Orders had won the prize that The Booker had died years ago and that ‘there should be no more Booker Prizes.’ In contrast, in 1995, when Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road was the winner, Richard Todd wrote in his book, Consuming Fictions : ‘how vital and robust English fiction has once more become. English fiction has been invigorated by the pluralism that The Booker Prize pre-eminently has encouraged….’
