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| Better late than never - the Portico Prize 2012 | Better late than never - the Portico Prize 2012 |
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| My money was on Val McDermid to become the first author to win the Portico Prize twice. This was not simply because she was sat on my table in the Great Hall of Manchester Town Hall, albeit separated by large swags of fruit and flowers, but because I was mightily impressed that the character Jacko Vance in her short-listed entry for the fiction prize, The Retribution, was based on Jimmy Savile and had been devised (for her earlier Wire in the Blood) at a time when so many of us thought that Savile was a harmless fruitcake. | My money was on Val McDermid to become the first author to win the Portico Prize twice. This was not simply because she was sat on my table in the Great Hall of Manchester Town Hall, albeit separated by large swags of fruit and flowers, but because I was mightily impressed that the character Jacko Vance in her short-listed entry for the fiction prize, The Retribution, was based on Jimmy Savile and had been devised (for her earlier Wire in the Blood) at a time when so many of us thought that Savile was a harmless fruitcake. |
| So up stepped Alison Boyle of the Arts Council to announce that the fiction winner was… Sarah Hall who won for the second time running, this time with The Beautiful Indifference, short stories described as "dark, fierce and sensual" in the Guardian. Apparently Sarah had chosen for superstitious reasons not to prepare an acceptance speech, even though Val McDermid had modestly intimated that she though Sarah would win again. | So up stepped Alison Boyle of the Arts Council to announce that the fiction winner was… Sarah Hall who won for the second time running, this time with The Beautiful Indifference, short stories described as "dark, fierce and sensual" in the Guardian. Apparently Sarah had chosen for superstitious reasons not to prepare an acceptance speech, even though Val McDermid had modestly intimated that she though Sarah would win again. |
| Even Anthony Burgess didn't manage two wins. Actually the great curmudgeon, raised locally in Harpurhey and Miles Platting, moaned and moaned when he won in 1989 for Any Old Iron at the small size of the Portico cheque, then £1,500. He quipped that it would be "a good idea if the organisers could drum up a similar sum to the £20,000 of the Booker Prize". This is the man who had become so rich from writing a stack of novels, newspaper columns, reviews and assorted works that he had managed to elevate himself socially from dingy rooms above a newsagent's in Moss Side to Monaco. | Even Anthony Burgess didn't manage two wins. Actually the great curmudgeon, raised locally in Harpurhey and Miles Platting, moaned and moaned when he won in 1989 for Any Old Iron at the small size of the Portico cheque, then £1,500. He quipped that it would be "a good idea if the organisers could drum up a similar sum to the £20,000 of the Booker Prize". This is the man who had become so rich from writing a stack of novels, newspaper columns, reviews and assorted works that he had managed to elevate himself socially from dingy rooms above a newsagent's in Moss Side to Monaco. |
| Well the Portico Prize is now a five-figure sum thanks to the Arts Council which generously donated £10,000 for each of the two prizes – fiction and non-fiction. | Well the Portico Prize is now a five-figure sum thanks to the Arts Council which generously donated £10,000 for each of the two prizes – fiction and non-fiction. |
| The fiction judges included Arthur Bostrom, tall, grey and graceful; well certainly more graceful than when he played the lovable Officer Crabtree in 'Allo 'Allo. Amongst the judges in the non-fiction category was author and broadcaster Stuart Maconie, he of the impeccable music taste – he once played Sun Ra's "Saturn" on Radio 6 Music – and their choice for the Portico Prize 2012's best non-fiction work was Strands by Jean Sprackland. Strands is a series of meditations and ramblings prompted by walking on the wild beaches between Blackpool and Liverpool: a barnacled wreck visible in the water at one spot; shifting sands and sea change all around. | The fiction judges included Arthur Bostrom, tall, grey and graceful; well certainly more graceful than when he played the lovable Officer Crabtree in 'Allo 'Allo. Amongst the judges in the non-fiction category was author and broadcaster Stuart Maconie, he of the impeccable music taste – he once played Sun Ra's "Saturn" on Radio 6 Music – and their choice for the Portico Prize 2012's best non-fiction work was Strands by Jean Sprackland. Strands is a series of meditations and ramblings prompted by walking on the wild beaches between Blackpool and Liverpool: a barnacled wreck visible in the water at one spot; shifting sands and sea change all around. |
| Like the previous non-fiction winner, our own Madeleine Bunting's The Plot: A Biography of My Father's English Acre, we have here a winner seriously influenced by the template for all peripatetic monologues: WG Sebald's Rings of Saturn. It's not hard to imagine Sebald, a former Manchester University lecturer with an international reputation at the time of his fatal car crash in Norwich in 2001, sat at the Portico Prizegiving, probably near the John Kay mural, with its quasi-religious overtones and satire of industry. Simon Armitage could be on one side and Joan Bakewell on the other. Both the latter were nominated this year; such is the A-list status of the prize. | Like the previous non-fiction winner, our own Madeleine Bunting's The Plot: A Biography of My Father's English Acre, we have here a winner seriously influenced by the template for all peripatetic monologues: WG Sebald's Rings of Saturn. It's not hard to imagine Sebald, a former Manchester University lecturer with an international reputation at the time of his fatal car crash in Norwich in 2001, sat at the Portico Prizegiving, probably near the John Kay mural, with its quasi-religious overtones and satire of industry. Simon Armitage could be on one side and Joan Bakewell on the other. Both the latter were nominated this year; such is the A-list status of the prize. |
| But the biennial Portico is more than an awards ceremony. It's a meeting of Manchester's intellectuals and aesthetes, ingesting sumptuous food and bon mots in the finest of surroundings. John Ruskin once described the Great Hall, as the "finest Gothic apartment in Europe." Rightly so, with Alfred Waterhouse's design of a mediaeval banqueting hall decorated with 12 panels of Manchester and English history by Ford Madox Brown. | But the biennial Portico is more than an awards ceremony. It's a meeting of Manchester's intellectuals and aesthetes, ingesting sumptuous food and bon mots in the finest of surroundings. John Ruskin once described the Great Hall, as the "finest Gothic apartment in Europe." Rightly so, with Alfred Waterhouse's design of a mediaeval banqueting hall decorated with 12 panels of Manchester and English history by Ford Madox Brown. |
| The evening was expertly organised – pre-match drinks, speeches, courses, awards, thanks – but there was a bit of a shock on arrival. Lloyd Street, at the side of the Town Hall was swarming with police on foot and motor bikes. It turned out that they were there to protect the Irish President, Michael D Higgins, who was on a state visit, but my first thoughts were that Greater Manchester Police were going to arrest Jacko Vance to help with their inquiries into Savilegate. Now that would have been a story worth telling. | The evening was expertly organised – pre-match drinks, speeches, courses, awards, thanks – but there was a bit of a shock on arrival. Lloyd Street, at the side of the Town Hall was swarming with police on foot and motor bikes. It turned out that they were there to protect the Irish President, Michael D Higgins, who was on a state visit, but my first thoughts were that Greater Manchester Police were going to arrest Jacko Vance to help with their inquiries into Savilegate. Now that would have been a story worth telling. |
| Ed Glinert is an author and set up City Life, Manchester's listings magazine. | Ed Glinert is an author and set up City Life, Manchester's listings magazine. |
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