Man Booker Prize won by Hilary Mantel !

The hottest favourite in the 40-year history of the Man Booker Prize edged home last night when Wolf Hall was named the winner in a secret ballot by three votes to two.

The judges described Hilary Mantel’s 650-page doorstopper about political manoeuvring at the court of Henry VIII as an “extraordinary piece of storytelling . . . a modern novel that happens to be set in the 16th century”.

Mantel, 57, is a seasoned novelist who has been shortlisted for the Orange prize and the Commonwealth prize for fiction. Wolf Hall revolves around Thomas Cromwell, the bullying, quick-thinking son of a Putney drunk and blacksmith who becomes Henry VIII’s most powerful adviser.

She said last night: “I hesitated for such a long time before beginning to write this book, actually for about 20 years … At this moment I am happily flying through the air.”

Booksellers and readers alike will hope that Mantel’s intention to write a sequel comes to fruition sooner than her promised novel about Jean-Paul Marat, “guest star” of A Place of Greater Safety. Seventeen years after her French Revolution epic was published there is no sign of the follow-up.Wolf Hall was also doing brisker business than its rivals at the tills. Initially it was outsold by Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger but, according to Waterstone’s, sales of the book increased by 500 per cent after it was shortlisted. It has sold six times as well in e-book format as its nearest rival.

Despite its highbrow reputation, the prize was founded to sell books.

We can guarantee that this will be at the top for a lot of peoples Christmas list … a good one when you don’t know what to buy the older of the family members …

… here you go Dad try your hand on this.

Turner prize time again ….

A filthy, unmade bed. A shark pickled in formaldehyde. Some lights going on and off.

These are just a few of the past Turner Prize hopefuls which have prompted screaming tabloid headlines and public derision alike.

The time for the latest exhibition of contemporary artists’ work vying for the prestigious £25,000 prize has arrived again at Tate Britain.

As someone who has only seen the show once and didnt really understand it much then i think that now is the time to visit the gallery with wide, child-like eyes and a fresh perspective.

Richard Wright, has created a painting on one of the gallery walls using the painstaking, age-old fresco techniques of the old masters – drawing a cartoon, tracing it on the wall, then painting over it and finally gilding it.

Roger Hiorns has displayed, as a sculpture, the dust that constitutes the physical remains of a passenger jet engine, simply sprinkled in shades of grey over the floor of one of Tate Britain’s galleries. “The engine has been dematerialised,” says Tate curator Helen Little. “We are prompted to reconsider our faith in technology, and to think about the entropy of all things: all objects are, in the end, dust.”

Lucy Skaer – the second Scotland-based name on the shortlist, reflecting the strength of the visual arts north of the border – has brought with her an entire sperm whale skull, loaned from the National Museums of Scotland, and then largely hidden it behind screens so that it is only just glimpsed by visitors. According to curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas, it is a process of slowing down the act of looking and the viewer’s moment of perception, so that “the eye oscillates between the detail and the recognition of the form; she draws us into an encounter with the image.”

Enrico David, who has created a bizarre cast of sculptural characters who sit on a stage, waiting – somewhat aggressively – to be sized up by visitors. A construction worker bares his backside; Kenneth Williams appears, somewhat incongruously; and strange, egg-shaped papier-mache men line up to be scrutinised “with a sense of antagonistic resignation,” according to Carey-Thomas.

The winner, who will be awarded £25,000, is announced on 7 December 2009.

Worth a look – would love to hear what you all think about it …