KEY POINTS:
It was a wet night in London on Tuesday as the countdown finally loomed for the announcement of this year's Man Booker prize for literature.
Inside London's ancient Guildhall, on the banks of the Thames, the six shortlisted finalists feasted on cep soufflé with black truffle shavings, cote de boeuf and poached champagne rhubarb, washed down with Pouilly wine.
New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones, the first Kiwi to be shortlisted since Keri Hulme won the Booker in 1985, was at table A with his girlfriend, and a handful of people from the New Zealand publishing scene, watched over from on high by an array of solemn statues, including William Pitt the Younger. Whoever he was ...
A few kilometres away, to the west of Covent Garden, Jones' supporters had to find a tiny alley called Brydges Place, an alley so narrow you could touch both sides with one arm held out - and so obscure my Knowledge-proud cabbie has never heard of it. He treated it as a moment of personal triumph when he eventually pulled up outside.
A trot down the dark alley, and a ring on the doorbell of the Two Brydges private club gave entrance to a higgledy-piggledy three-storey 19th century house, formerly Oscar Wilde's club, boasting treacherous creaking stairs, and little rooms with book-lined and wood-panelled walls. Each room was furnished with dining tables - on a slant - with crisp white tablecloths and smouldering candles. The menu, as manager Michele, a suave Italian man, explained, contained none of that fancy new stuff.
Two Brydges does plain English food like steak and kidney ale pie with mashed spuds, and calves liver with crispy bacon. Michele added that the club, which has 600 paid-up clients, has "very famous" members who prefer discretion, quite out of character in celeb-obsessed London.
The Booker was to be announced at 10.20pm, watched by the Jones crowd at Two Brydges via a big-screen feed from the BBC.
As 10.20pm came, the publicist cried out "ssh".
"If McEwan wins, I'll spit," said a Jones fan, referring to Ian McEwan, the man tipped most likely to win if Jones did not.
Finally, the moment, and a quick rundown of the finalists from the BBC announcer, who described Jones as "a little-known New Zealand writer". Breaths were held. Two Brydges fell silent. And the winner is (rank outsider) Irish writer Anne Enright, for The Gathering, a book about a dysfunctional family no one at the party seemed to have read.
Two Brydges resounded with shocked gasps and groans, and an immediate rush outside, down those terrible stairs, for cigarettes - the new anti-smoking laws in Britain have led to a huge surge in outdoor fagging.
Jones, in impeccable formal dinner suit, turned up at Two Brydges about 11.30pm to a huge cheer, immediately surrounded by people talking, yelling, gesticulating at him. He maintained an expression of polite engagement but probably couldn't hear a word.
Penguin New Zealand publisher Geoff Walker commented that what had most impressed him about the ceremony, in contrast with the Montana Book Awards, in which Jones' Mister Pip won this year's best fiction prize, was the absence of a celebrity presenter and blaring muzak and the Booker's low-key, informal atmosphere. Jones said later he felt almost unable to breathe in the Guildhall, surrounded by all of that history staring down at him.
And so, glasses of bubbly - or, in Jones' case, a tall beer - raised to our boy who quipped, "They've changed their minds but really, actually, I'm quite relieved".
Later, "all these media people from New Zealand are ringing to ask me how does it feel to be a loser?" he told me. Jones didn't look like a loser, not one iota. He made the Booker shortlist.
Chair of the Man Booker panel Howard Davies was reported in the Guardian the next day as saying the judging process had been "tight".
In Britain, The Gathering has sold 3253 copies, at the time of print. Jones' Mister Pip has sold 5170. McEwan's On Chesil Beach has gone to more than 120,000. But for Jones, as he vanished for a few minutes down the tiniest alley in central London, clutching a cellphone to talk to Radio New Zealand's Checkpoint, Mister Pip has been a winner with legs, publication rolling on in more and more countries.
The Gathering, on the other hand, was described by the Guardian as no picnic, and by Enright herself as "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie".
As I left after midnight, the party was roaring. The next morning, on the BBC news, the Booker got a brief mention. Most of the attention, in the entertainment news on the main channels, was on the release of a Kylie Minogue movie.
* Linda Herrick travelled to the UK with the support and assistance of Cathay Pacific Airways.
