Mantel: Being favourite didn't guarantee win
Hilary Mantel: Being favourite didn't guarantee win
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Tuesday, 06, Oct 2009 11:19
By Lewis Bazley.
Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel has stressed her status as the bookmakers' favourite did not mean she felt confident of claiming the prize.
Her novel Wolf Hall was picked as the award winner from a shortlist of six, including Summertime by two-time winner JM Coetzee, The Little Stranger by twice-nominated Sarah Waters and The Children's Book by former judge AS Byatt.
Mantel became the first outright favourite to win the prize since Yann Martel claimed the award in 2002 for Life of Pi.
But after receiving a £50,000 cheque at a Tuesday ceremony at London's Guildhall, Mantel remained unassuming about proving the bookmakers' odds right.
"Having been a Booker judge [in 1990], I know that absolutely anything can happen in that final meeting. I don't think anyone can appreciate how tense it can be for the judges," she said in a press conference after her triumph.
"I just know to take nothing for granted. I never for a moment thought being favourite would weigh with the judges - in fact, I thought it might work in the opposite way and they might get fed up with being told what to do!"
During her acceptance speech, Mantel confirmed she had warned her publishers Fourth Estate about the length of the time the book would take to write and she later explained she had conceived of the novel around 30 years ago.
"It is true that I first thought of the book in the 1970s. You might have an idea for a book, it doesn't mean you're ready to write it," she said.
"It has to grow, you have to grow up - I couldn't back then have written a book about a seasoned, hardened political campaigner in his 50s.
"Now I'm a seasoned, hardened literary campaigner in my 50s, I can do it!"
As well as a cheque for £50,000 and the receipt of a year's membership for the Groucho Club in London, the 57-year-old can expect a sales boom and an increased recognition across the globe.
She joked she would spend the prize money on "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" but added: "It buys time, which is what an author wants."
Mantel's win represents the first time publishers Fourth Estate have had a Man Booker Prize winner, having previously released three shortlisted novels in the shape of Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries (1993) and Unless (2002) and Nicola Barker's Darkmans (2007).
Mantel confirmed she is in the process of writing The Mirror and the Light, the sequel to Wolf Hall, which begins on the evening of Thomas More's execution and will follow the continued rise of Thomas Cromwell until his "abrupt fall from grace and execution".