Michael Caine presenting Ruth Prawer Jhabvala with the 1975 Booker Prize
Another year of controversy when after working their way through the 83 novels submitted the unimpressed judges decided that only two of them were worthy of shortlisting.
After Angus Wilson and his panel had dismissed 81 by now severely disgruntled novelists the two left standing were Ruth Prawer Jhabvala with Heat and Dust and Thomas Keneally with Gossip From the Forest: Jhabvala won.
By then the German-born Anglo-American Jhabvala had already started writing screenplays for the celebrated filmmaking duo of James Merchant and Ismail Ivory and she holds the distinction of being the only Booker Prize winner also to have won an Oscar.
Winner The Booker Prize 1975