P.H. Newby’s 17th novel made literary history in 1969, when it was named as the inaugural winner of the Booker Prize.
By P. H. Newby
The Booker Prize 1969
P.H. Newby
The first year of the Booker Prize for Fiction, sponsored by the food wholesalers Booker McConnell Ltd and with a £5,000 cheque for the winner. No one knew quite what to expect.
In picking up the award and the glory, P.H. Newby, with Something to Answer For, saw off both Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch. Writing wasn’t even Newby’s day job; he was as a high-ranking BBC radio producer and Controller of Radio Three.
He managed to keep both strands running in parallel – his winning novel was his 17th – and although the prize quickly demonstrated something of its future potency by catapulting Newby on to the best-seller lists he saw out his career at the BBC.
Winner The Booker Prize 1969
- By
- P. H. Newby
- Published by
- Faber & Faber
P.H. Newby’s 17th novel made literary history in 1969, when it was named as the inaugural winner of the Booker Prize.
The shortlist
Barry England’s powerful account of two escaped prisoners’ desperate attempt to outrun their pursuers across a dangerous and alien landscape.
Nicholas Mosely presents eight carefully connected stories that pursue the notion that ‘those who like unhappy ends can have them, and those who don't will have to look for them’.
A government official lies dead - but awkward questions around his supposed suicide remain in Iris Murdoch’s thriller-meets-romantic comedy.
By Iris Murdoch
A rising movie star begins to believe in her own meticulously manufactured public image in Muriel Spark’s cautionary tale of fame and identity.
By Muriel Spark
Gordon Williams’ powerful and violent story of a Scottish adolescent growing up fast in the austere years following the Second World War.
