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Poet Laureate Andrew Motion asks: who is the greatest living writer of the British Isles?
How do we determine literary greatness? Book sales or literary merit? Entertainment or enlightenment? Poet? Novelist? Biographer? Short-story Writer? Essayist? Playwright?
On Thursday, 22nd March, the David Cohen Prize for Literature will be presented at a gala ceremony at the British Library. This prize is awarded every two years to a writer from the UK or Ireland in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in literature. Who do you think is a worthy winner?
On this occasion, I am honoured to be chair of a distinguished panel of judges, which includes Liz Calder, Anne Enright, Jackie Kay , Hilary Mantel, Rt Hon Lord Chris Smith, Sir Peter Stothard, Boyd Tonkin, and Professor Jeremy Treglown. Opinions among us run strong and the debate is sometimes heated. But that is by the by.
What the arts debate really wants to know is: who would you nominate as the greatest living writer of the British Isles? A poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, biographer or playwright? - your choice could be any of these.
Previous winners of the David Cohen Prize for Literature represent the entire Literary spectrum: V.S Naipaul (novelist and essayist), Harold Pinter (playwright) , Muriel Spark (novelist), William Trevor (novelist and short-story writer), Doris Lessing (novelist), Beryl Bainbridge (novelist), Thom Gunn (poet), and Michael Holroyd (biographer).
Make sure you have your say! Join the debate by posting a comment in the box below. Who do you think should win this time? And why? We look forward to hearing your views and reading the debate as it unfolds on these pages.
Best Wishes,
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate
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My vote would go to Lesley Glaister.
Martin Amis
Tom Raworth
'Best' is a game for six-year-olds and consumers with the minds of six-year-olds. The convenors of this daft vote should grow up and get a life.
John Le Carre
Mining this morning's Guardian for witticisms to pass off as one's own is for seven year olds, Mr Jermey:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2019583,00.html
Meanwhile, my vote splits three-ways, between Philip Pullman, Francis Spufford and Hermione Lee. If it was a phone-vote, my £1.50 woudl go to Pullman.
My apologies - the Guardian seems to have ripped you off, Mr Jermey!
Hilary Mantel, because she is not only challenging, thought-provoking and deep, but also a fantastic storyteller and has a dark sense of humour which is quite unparalleled
this whole brouhaha about nominating Britain's GLA seems to me as much economically driven as it is about constructing a hegemonic notion about what literature "ought to be". In my opinion it is, and should stay, simply impossible to allocate one author or one work with such a definition. Surely opinions have and always will greatly defer in what makes out a really great book. And that is good so! Different people look for different things in the works they indulge in, and label retrospectively "great" - and perhaps different political opinions also play an important role in judging fictional works ...
Kazuo Ishiguro. His writing represents true talent and inspired genius and makes up for all the dross that passes itself off as
"good writing" these days.
Salman Rushdie. No contest.
Mr. Bainbridge is right--Rushdie is the most influential, the most poetic, and the most distinguished of all living British writers. His work till _The Satanic Verses_ represents the greatest post-1970s achievement in literature on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jeanette Winterson
Fay Weldon would be my choice, for great, provocative and entertaining work.
Sandra Shevey....the biogs but moreso the film articles and improv talks.
Of course this is a fatuous exercise unless and until some agreement on what is meant by 'best' is reached. Bearing that in mind my own preference would be for Edwin Morgan.
Why is it that literati if not literature itself is obsessed with greatness and immortality (otherwise 'living' becomes redundant)?
Not the same as film - would we ask who is the greatest director, actor, composer, musician, dancer, all other art forms, or cultural phenomena - greatest living statesperson, soccer player...?
I feel it is pernicious to second-guess future literary critics and book-sales, and deleterious to the vivacity of writing and reading, (and why else live as a literati?) You're only as good as the next sentence your reader reads.
Surprised only one poet - Edwin Morgan, so far - what, no Heaney?
It also denies radical development and those young at heart. For these reasons I chose James Wilkes, a 26 year old poet who appears in Generation Txt, publisher penned in the margins, which is what an obsession with immortality leads to, including the immortals.
Of course we're touched when someone we know and love dies - I still can't quite believe Miles Davies isn't alive, and was moved to write this about Thom Gunn when he left us
Thom Gunn 1930 - 2004
While I was away he died.
Not that I knew him too
well. We never met, just shared
a few intimate moments
each side of a page.
I wonder now
how he knew so well
what we'd be thinking.
The sure touch,
their passions' economy
endless to the end.
A crease in a page or word
a ready worry line or smile
at the unreadiness of time.
Not yet, and he was gone.
How like him to haunt us
with such warm familiarity.
How like us to leave him
in a world of cold disparity.
Based on an elegy by Thom Gunn to a friend who died of aids,
Seamus Heaney, Poet
Salman Rushdie, Novelist
Alan Bennett
ian mcewan
Dylan Thomas, for his humour, his magic with words and his love for them.
Iain Banks; with and without his M.
William Neill
William Neill (born 1922) is a Scottish poet who writes in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and English. He was a frequent contributor to both Catalyst and Gairm magazines. As a young writer, he studied the poets of the Scottish Renaissance, and views 'modern assertions that "Scots was dying in the time of Burns" as the assertions of dyed-in-the-wool townies. Awards for poetry have included The Grierson Verse Prize (1970), Sloan Prize (1970) and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award (1985). He now lives in Galloway and was born in Prestwick, Ayrshire;
Derek Mahon - a subtle, absorbing and extremely fine poet. He deserves to be far more widely known and read.
Harold Pinter - to achieve legendary status in his own life span is outstanding .He is the master of 'less is more'.
Tend to aggree that 'best' is a daft way of talking about art. Though it is a good way of raising the profile of writers (usually those who hardly need it). 'What do we get out of reading the writers we value?' might be more interesting? Or, 'why is it we can't read those writers we think we should?'
This is hard one. Again it comes down to personal preference. Should it be Shakespeare, Austen, or Priestley. We all have our own choices. Who was the writer who inspired you to read, and kept you on the edge of your seat whetting your appetite and making you want to get to the end of the book and when you do leaving you with a huge vaccum of loss? For me that was Tolkein; but I dont think he was the greatest writer of all time. It has to be Shakespeare because he managed to encapsulate every type of situation, human emotion with such accuracy, and attention to detail managing to be sensitive, humorous, cruel, passionate, playful, manipulative with our feelings all at the same time. That surely deserves an award.
Too many novelists today are merely self-indulgent, rambling luvvies. V S Naipaul remains the most honest and accessible of British writers followed by Kazio Ishiguro.