Despite believing that ‘A committee is a blunt instrument of literary criticism’, the novelist David Lodge chaired a group of judges that came up with a roundly applauded winner.

Lodge’s ‘campus novels’ satirising academic life were the fruit of a long parallel career as an academic, notably at the University of Birmingham – the model for his fictional institution ‘Rummidge’. With his friend Malcolm Bradbury he showed readers that non-metropolitan fiction was both vibrant and valid. Lodge came to the prize judging as a twice shortlisted novelist (1984 and 1988) while his Out of the Shelter (1970) was longlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize. He is also the author of three plays and, to date, two volumes of autobiography.

David Lodge

All nominated books

Out Of The Shelter
Small World
Nice Work