50 years of the Man Booker prize

The Man Booker Prize is celebrating its 50th anniversary.


The first Man Booker award was presented in 1969, featuring novels that were mostly published during the preceding year.

The Golden Man Booker Prize

To celebrate the anniversary, a one-off Prize called the Golden Man Booker was announced. A panel of judges reviewed previous winners and a shortlist of five previous, considered to have ‘stood the test of time’ were announced:

  • Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger
  • Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
  • S. Naipaul - In a Free State
  • Michael Ondaatje - The English Patientby Michael Ondaatje 
  • George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo

The winner, voted for by a public vote, was The English Patient.

Resources for libraries

Podcasts featuring key Man Booker announcements can be downloaded via iTunes and are also available via SoundCloud.

For libraries wanting to tie-in with the award process, posters featuring shortlisted works can be found here.

The Man Booker Prize has its own YouTube channel.

Supporting reading in the community/with reading groups - Resource guides for reading groups

Encouraging a community of reading

We’ll be discussing the ways in which libraries are creating reading communities at Internet Librarian International. We’ll be hearing how Finland is inspiring grown-up readers and using Instagram to encourage reading and how a school is creating a global community of reading via Twitter. (Session C103, Day One of the conference).