LET'S FAST-FORWARD about 10 years to the late 1960s.
Two things happened in the world of literary awards, one very important, and one totally inconsequential. We'll start with the trivial one.
My father had vanished. This was nothing new. He was constantly disappearing.
But I was a small, inquisitive child, and found a silver scroll, like a giant napkin ring, in a box in his cupboard.
My mother told me it was a prize he got for writing a book. I knew about his book—an expose that got him into dreadful trouble, and led to us being more or less exiled from our home country for 20 years.
But the Magsaysay scroll showed me the other side of the story: a difficult-but-worthwhile piece of writing had been recognized and its author rewarded. It inspired me—not to be a writer, but to help writers in Asia.
* * *
The other event was important.
Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, had suddenly made a pile of money.
After a quiet start in the 1950s, Bond had become wildly popular after John F. Kennedy had listed one of the British spy’s adventures in his list of ten best books—and of course there were the movies, starting with Dr No in 1962.
(Ian Fleming)
The trouble was the taxman.
Authors rarely made the big bucks that other entertainers made—and found it hard to hold on to the small earnings that they did accrue, thanks to the heavy taxation policies of the era.
Ian Fleming, playing golf with Jock Campbell, a businessman who ran a food empire called Booker-McConnell (which operated sugar plantations, a cash and carry chain store, and an upmarket supermarket chain called Budgens), complained bitterly about the inland revenue, which took up to 19 shillings of every pound, as accurately detailed in Taxman, a Beatles song of the time. (A pound was 20 shillings.)
Campbell offered a solution to his irritated golf buddy. Business people could get through tax loopholes which were not available to individuals.
To help Fleming, he started an “authors division” in his food empire. The accountants could then save a pile of money for Fleming. Other authors signed up, including Agatha Christie.
When I say this, it makes Campbell sound like rather a sharp, wily character, but that would not be accurate. Indeed, it could be said that the Booker company was considered horribly exploitative, especially of sugar workers in Guinea, until Campbell took over, and turned it into a much more benevolent organization.
He could be seen as an early “fair trade” pioneer. He liked to help people, and it was his good nature that prompted him to set up a new division for Fleming and other authors.
* * *
But the UK taxman was not so easily fooled.
He assumed that Booker-McConnell’s new division was purely a tax dodge, and demanded proof that this was a logical, legitimate area of diversification for a food company.
* * *
Campbell, looking for a highly visible to validate the new venture, admitted that it was an unusual diversification, but said that the authors’ division was a legitimate offbeat marketing venture to make the name of the food company better known among well-heeled customers.
Staff at Jonathan Cape, a publisher, suggested he take inspiration from the venerable Prix Goncourt, a French award which was then the best known literary prize in Europe. Thus was launched the Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction.
* * *
The first award was presented in 1969, and was considered a rather bookish (naturally) event of interest only to a small number of people who liked high-end literary fiction. It was of no interest to the media.
But it slowly and steadily spread in importance until it became globally famous, with the results being televised nationally in the UK, and published in newspapers around the world.
* * *
By the 1980s, the Booker Prize had become one of the three best known literary prizes in the world, the others being the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Pulitzer Prize. “The Booker” was kept financed by the profitable food businesses, such as the Budgen supermarket chain.
By that stage, the present writer had moved from Sri Lanka, via Malaya, to London, and working as Chief Shelf Stacker at the Budgen supermarket on East Finchley High Road (above).
It was hard work for low pay, but my team and I got some satisfaction that our hard labor was directly supporting deserving authors. Yes, I am being ironic. It sucked.
