London’s Guildhall is a magnificent and very beautiful venue for the Man Booker Prize ceremony. At Table 5 with Lloyd Jones we gaze up at the fabulous ceiling and the huge statuary, one for William Pitt and one for Lord Nelson. There are 600 guests, lots of famous faces. There’s even High Commissioner Jonathon Hunt. Table 5 is at the front with the other shortlisted authors.

Earlier our ordered mini-cab failed to show and we were 25 minutes late and panicking. As in Auckland, they’re digging up the roads here.

Lloyd seems remarkably calm. With the other authors he goes up to the stage to receive £2500 and a truly splendid hand-bound edition of Mister Pip. Tons of applause. Pakistani Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is wearing a magnificent silvery grey traditional tunic and trousers. He looks spectacular amidst the black tuxedos.

In the final half hour we’re all very tense. I gaze up at the ceiling again trying to capture the moment: This is the Guildhall, I’m a New Zealand publisher, this is the Man Booker dinner, that’s Lloyd Jones, this is only the second time a New Zealand novel has been shortlisted. It’s a moment to savour. I can see Lloyd and Michael Gifkins doing the same thing.

Despite the fabulous venue the ceremony itself is quite low-key. Unlike New Zealand’s Montana Awards there is no celebrity presenter, no recorded trumpets, no big screens behind the stage. The MS is Howard Davies, chairman of the judges, a witty, erudite academic.

But the tension builds and the big announcement approaches. We’re told the announcement will be live on BBC1, and the timing is split second. As Davies speaks, running through the shortlisted titles, then filling in make up time, television floor people suddenly appear. The floor manager raises her arm.

It’s the big moment. Has being the front-runner harmed Mister Pip’s final chances? They reckon the favourite hasn’t won the Booker for the past five years. How could Lloyd Jones not win?

Announces Davies: ‘And the winner is – The Gathering by Anne Enright.’

Enright is a delighted Irish writer with a strong track record. She gives a short, charming speech. It’s all over.

The mood at Table 5 deflates.  We try to stay positive. Lloyd is smiling and gracious. If he’s disappointed he’s not showing it. He greets and congratulates several of the other authors. People mill around, he’s very popular.

Chief judge Davies comes up to Lloyd and tells him it was really close, and Mister Pip was right in there at the end. Is he hinting at something? Then he says that they tried several judging systems and every time The Gathering came out the winner. Now that’s interesting.

People aroundus speculate that Mister Pip and one other book were locked head to head and that The Gathering was a compromise choice. But it’s speculation, nobody really knows.

But what’s clear is that although Lloyd Jones has failed to win the Man Booker Prize, Mister Pip is in many ways the real winner of the overall process. In a few weeks it has gone from 20 to 1 to 2 to 1 in the betting. None of the other novels have gone through such a transformation. During that time British publishers John Murray have sold 30,000 copies and are reprinting. They reckon it will hit 50,000 by Christmas. This Booker has launched Lloyd in Britain. As a result of the shortlisting, John Murray want to publish Lloyd’s earlier novels Biografi, The Book of Fame, and Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance. So do Random House in Canada, and Text Publishing in Australia, and there’s interest from his US publishers, Dial Press, as well. Others will follow for sure. There’s hot interest in film rights to Mister Pip.

At a party in a Soho club afterwards we tell Lloyd all this. He agrees. He’s still being calm and gracious. In fact in a little speech, he says in some ways he’s relieved he didn’t win. Anne Enright is still giving interviews, he quips, while he’s at a party having a beer!

Lloyd meets the Queen next week (with Michael Gifkins’ help he bought a shirt and tie this afternoon). Then for Lloyd and his partner Anne it’s back to Berlin. And for Michael Gifkins and this weary publisher it’s home. It’s been an amazing night.

Mon 24 September

Michael Gifkins, Lloyd Jones’ agent, and I continue to compare notes on how to prepare ourselves for the Man Booker Award grand gala dinner in London on 16 October. What do we wear? Michael Heyward of Text in Melbourne, who accompanied both M J Hyland and Kate Grenville to last year’s Booker dinner, emails back: ‘Dust off your tux, Geoff.’ But I don’t own a tux. A dinner suit at the Montanas? I’d be laughed off the stage.

After many hassles and much sweat I succeed in hiring an English tuxedo on-line. You drop in your measurements and your financials and they promise to deliver your dinner suit on a named date to a hotel of your choice free of charge. Of course these things are never as easy as they first seem. At my first attempt I’m within a hair’s breadth of hiring three identical tuxedos before I bail out. But now it’s done. Wing collar, cufflinks, all done.

But what about Lloyd? At the moment the poor man is so snowed under from every quarter that he’s not answering his emails. Michael and I are sure he didn’t take a tux to Berlin with him.

Meanwhile the foreign rights deals for Mister Pip continue to come through for approval from Anne Beilby at Text. Danish language rights to Hr Ferdinand/Bjartur. Korean rights to Daekyo Bertelsmann. Norway to Cappalen.


Tuesday 25 September

The formal invitation from the Man Booker Prize organisers arrives in my Penguin in-tray. ‘Black tie’, yes, got it. Looking through I note that it’s ‘reception’ at 7.00pm, dinner at 8.00pm and – what? ‘Carriages: 11.30pm’! I gaze at this in amazement and check it out with Dorothy and Jeff in the office. But, but, a carriage? An extra expense I hadn’t thought of…

Today Catalan rights to Salamandra. The advance isn’t big, but there’s celebration in the office – now we’re up to 20 territories sold.

Our German rights agent, Bastian Schlueck emails to say he’s sure he can sell German language rights to Lloyd Jones’ earlier novel Paint Your Wife. Can I clarify we do have rights? Yes, I can. But we’ve sold world rights to Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance to Michael Heyward at Text, and he’s expecting great things at Frankfurt.

Michael Gifkins and I email each other in close collaboration. We’ve just discovered that the Rugby World Cup semi-finals are on the 13th. He’ll be in London, but I’ll still be at Frankfurt, my last day. This is going to require the most careful planning.