The fifth author, I’d suggest, is the one that people in 1974 might have thought the likeliest to be remembered in 50 years. After all, C.P. Snow was then a celebrated public intellectual – knighted in 1957, made a life peer in 1964 – whose 11-novel series, Strangers and Brothers, had been widely acclaimed (with the title of one of them, Corridors of Power, adding a new phrase to the language).
These days, though, Snow has rather fallen beneath the radar – which, judging from the shortlisted In Their Wisdom, is both understandable and a pity. On the one hand, the book now seems resolutely, even comically old-fashioned: based on a disputed will, and featuring members of the Lords discussing their lives in London clubs. Touchingly, Snow expects his readers to understand when he compares his characters to say, the Duc of Saint Simon or ‘the unquenchable Lanjuinais throughout the French Revolution’.
On the other hand – as Elizabeth Jane Howard’s grateful young stepson once wrote – ‘one can only continue to admire Snow’s tolerance and honesty and his eloquence when writing about the possibilities of doing good and the difficulties of behaving well’. And, for all its dated feel, In Their Wisdom is the shortlisted book of 1974 most concerned with the events of the day: Britain’s sense of national decline; the fear that it was becoming ungovernable; and, not least, its entry into what would become the EU – where the arguments about the nation state versus an increasingly federal Europe seem strangely familiar.
By now you may have spotted something that Trewin lamented in his Claridge’s speech. Between them, the five shortlisted authors had written 53 novels – and ‘it is disappointing,’ Trewin told the Booker ceremony guests, ‘to see so little new talent emerging this year’. As it transpired, the old guard would remain in charge for a while yet: Booker winners over the next few years included Paul Scott, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Iris Murdoch and William Golding – all of whom had been going since the early 1950s. But waiting in the wings, and beginning to publish their first books, were the next-generation likes of Barnes, McEwan, Rushdie and Amis Jr…
And finally, an intriguing what-if. In later life, John le Carré wouldn’t allow his novels to be entered for literary prizes. But in 1974, one of his best-known books, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, was not only eligible for the Booker, it was, as the prize’s archives reveal, championed strongly by Trewin. So what if it had made the shortlist, or even won? Might Booker history, and British literature in general, now look very different, with the distinction between ‘genre’ and ‘literary’ fiction either far more blurred or obliterated entirely? (Discuss.)