At last, Beryl Bainbridge has won the Booker Prize. What a pity it is won posthumously, because she deserved recognition in her lifetime. The Booker Prize, either out of sentimentality, self-promotion or a combination of the two, urged readers to pick the Best of Beryl to mark an influential author who had been overlooked by 5 different Booker judging panels, which led her to be known as the ‘eternal bridesmaid’ of the prize. Master Georgie, her novel about the Crimean War, won the public vote.
It’s all terribly nice. The Booker’s literary director, Ion Trewin, gushed:
“I have a feeling that, wherever she is now, she’ll be hugging herself and saying ‘gosh, how lovely’. Over the years when she didn’t win, she thought oh well, and had another puff on a cigarette and a drink. But to win – well, I can’t believe it would give her anything other than immense pleasure.
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