Alan Taylor
- Prizes judged
Alan Taylor is a journalist, broadcaster and founding editor of The Scottish Review of Books, as well as being ‘half of the underperforming Scottish team on Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz’
A Scot himself, Taylor was one of the judges who chose the Booker Prize’s first Scottish winner, James Kelman, for How Late It Was, How Late. Taylor came to the judging panel as an experienced literary journalist and editor of anthologies, including one, Appointment in Arezzo, which detailed his friendship with Muriel Spark. The furore that met the announcement of Kelman didn’t diminish Taylor’s enthusiasm for the prize – indeed his accounts of the judging process reveal a wry pleasure in the fuss – and he became a member of the Booker Prize management committee.