Cheeky Julian

Fleet Street’s reaction to Julian Barnes’ Booker win appears to be one of relief and no small amount of applause: The Times’ literary editor Erica Wagner and the Guardian’s Mark Brown both sound an enormous “phew” in their columns this morning. The dissent about the Booker Prize in general and “readability” seem to have subsided for the moment as Barnes soaks up the praise, which you can see in the video clip above.

Mischievously, he said that The Sense of an Ending is the best book he’s written in the last five years. He even declared it to be “readable”. Barnes deserves to have won just for that irresistible cheek.

Meanwhile, Random House, Barnes’ publisher, is preparing a new run of 75,000 copies of the distinctive book. Last night, Barnes implied that the cover had been critical to the book’s commerical and critical success. Random House are now testing that theory on a grand scale.