The timing of its launch, just before the Man Booker winner was announced last October, was a deliberate “up yours”. The Literature prize, we were told, would be a serious rival to the Booker, particularly because it would include any novel first published in English. That opened it up to writers from America, whereas the Booker is confined to the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth.
The new award is the brainchild of the agent and former publisher Andrew Kidd, and its supporters include the past Booker victors John Banville and Pat Barker, as well as Mark Haddon and David Mitchell, both award-winning writers.
The organisers hoped the initial prize would be awarded this spring — which was a tad overoptimistic, as I hear it has been put on the back burner until at least next year. Not surprisingly, money and sponsorship are the problems: its creators have not raised anywhere near the necessary amount. It’s hardly the best time to squeeze cash out of kindly philanthropists.
Book awards do not come cheap. The Booker is estimated to cost at least £500,000 a year, with a fair bit simply for the grandiose dinner for 400 or so at the Guildhall, in London. The Costa gave up its big dinner three years ago (too pricey) and now has a smaller evening bash with canapés. The Orange, too, is only a drinks party.
The Man Booker might have been labelled “posh bingo” by Julian Barnes before he won it last year, but the Literature prize’s number has not yet come up. I suspect the Booker folk are discreetly smiling at the upstart stuck in the starting blocks.
Advertisement
Why were the Who’s My Generation and Hang on Sloopy, by the McCoys, played by the students in the opening episode of the new BBC2 drama White Heat? It was clearly set in January 1965, because of the repeated references to the death of Winston Churchill that month — though it was also odd to see the leaves fully in bloom in midwinter. Yet those songs were not released until autumn that year.
The writer, Paula Milne, should have known this, as she was then 17, and presumably a pop lover. The relevant hits for January 1965 were I Feel Fine, by the Beatles, and Georgie Fame’s Yeh Yeh.
I’m constantly surprised at the anachronistic errors in TV dramas, such as The Hour using “getting it together” and “bottle out”, and featuring a BBC reporter (played by Ben Whishaw) who doesn’t wear a tie on air. All wrong for 1956. Then there were the errors in the first series of Downton Abbey, which featured phrases such as “get shafted” — hardly comme il faut in 1912, even downstairs.
Birmingham is preparing what will be Europe’s largest public library. Costing £189m, nearly all from the city’s coffers, it will open by early summer 2013, on time and on budget.
Advertisement
With local-authority finances being squeezed and library-book borrowing falling, some might say this project is daft. I don’t think so. The new building — right in the centre of the city and not far from the ugly old one, which is to be knocked down — will be an integral part of the community, not only for lending books, CDs and DVDs, but in a wider cultural and educational role. This includes a huge online “store room”, a home for the archives of print, photography and music, exhibition and performance spaces, a Shakespeare memorial room and the redevelopment of Birmingham Rep, next door.
Birmingham has long been one of Britain’s bridesmaids, after losing out on being both the European and UK city of culture. By next summer, civic pride should be restored.
Outside the library, on Centenary Square, will stand a new sculpture designed by the Birmingham-born, Turner-winning artist Gillian Wearing. It will depict the Brum family of today, following a citywide competition. But what does that mean? Mum and dad with 2.4 kids? Unlikely. Wearing’s background is interesting. Formerly the girlfriend of the artist Mark Wallinger — he of the giant horse sculpture, and another Turner winner — she now lives with Michael Landy, who destroyed all his possessions as an artwork. Expect an unorthodox family sculpture.