In a belated attack of good sense, the judges of this year’s Man Booker Prize rewarded Julian Barnes for his novel The Sense of an Ending. But in a remarkably graceless speech, the chair of the judges, Stella Rimington, couldn’t resist a dig at critics of the shortlist (she no doubt had the NS‘s Leo Robson, among others, in mind), whom she accused of peddling “black propaganda”. She insisted that she and her fellow judges had reacted to criticism of their shortlist (and their pronouncements defending their choices) with “great glee and amusement” – which rather cements the suspicion that she wasn’t up to the job.
Read Leo Robson’s review of The Sense of an Ending here.
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