[2][3] A five-person panel consisting of authors, publishers and journalists, as well as politicians, actors, artists and musicians,[4] is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book.

[7][8][9] A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare around the world.

The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder.

[14] It doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world's richest literary prizes.

W. L. Webb, The Guardian's Literary Editor, was chair of the inaugural set of judges,[6] which included Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, Frank Kermode and David Farrer.

In 1972, winning writer John Berger, known for his Marxist worldview, protested during his acceptance speech against Booker McConnell.

[20][21] Berger donated half of his £5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement, because it had a socialist and revolutionary perspective in agreement with his own.

Both novels had been seen as favourites to win leading up to the prize, and the dramatic "literary battle" between two senior writers made front-page news.

[27] At the award ceremony, Fay Weldon used her speech to attack the assembled publishers, accusing them of exploiting and undervaluing authors.

"[28] In 1992, the jury split the prize between Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger.

[30] In 1994, The Guardian's literary editor Richard Gott, citing the lack of objective criteria and the exclusion of American authors, described the prize as "a significant and dangerous iceberg in the sea of British culture that serves as a symbol of its current malaise".

[12][31] In 1996, A. L. Kennedy served as a judge; in 2001, she called the prize "a pile of crooked nonsense" with the winner determined by "who knows who, who's sleeping with who, who's selling drugs to who, who's married to who, whose turn it is".

Carmen Callil, chair of the previous year's Booker judges, called it an "execrable" book and said on television that it should not even have been on the shortlist.

Booker Prize chairman Martyn Goff said Roy won because nobody objected, following the rejection by the judges of Bernard MacLaverty's shortlisted book due to their dismissal of him as "a wonderful short-story writer and that Grace Notes was three short stories strung together".

"Outsider" John Banville began this trend in 2005 when his novel The Sea was selected as a surprise winner:[36] Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of The Independent, famously condemned it as "possibly the most perverse decision in the history of the award" and rival novelist Tibor Fischer poured scorn on Banville's victory.

The following year it was India's turn again, with Aravind Adiga narrowly defeating Enright's fellow Irishman Sebastian Barry.

[38] Historically, the winner of the Booker Prize was required to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe.

It was announced on 18 September 2013 that future Booker Prize awards would consider authors from anywhere in the world, so long as their work was in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

[41] In 2018, publishers sought to reverse the change, arguing that the inclusion of American writers would lead to homogenisation, reducing diversity and opportunities everywhere, including in America, to learn about "great books that haven't already been widely heralded".

[43][44] In 2019, despite having been unequivocally warned against doing so, the foundation's jury – under the chair Peter Florence – split the prize, awarding it to two authors, in breach of a rule established in 1993.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual award ceremony was replaced with a livestream from the Roundhouse in London, without the shortlisted authors in attendance.

[48] 2021's small-scale ceremony, once again impacted by COVID-19, saw South African writer Damon Galgut, who had been shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, win the prize for The Promise.

2022 saw a reimagined winner ceremony at the Roundhouse, hosted by comedian Sophie Duker and featuring a keynote speech by singer Dua Lipa.

[49] The prize was won by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

Gaby Wood, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, chooses the judges in consultation with an advisory committee made up of senior figures from the UK publishing industry.

On winning the prize in 2011 he joked that he had revised his opinion, telling reporters that he had realised "the judges are the wisest heads in literary Christendom".

One book from each decade was selected by a panel of judges: Naipaul's In a Free State (the 1971 winner), Lively's Moon Tiger (1987), Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992), Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) and Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo (2017).

In 2008, the winner for 1948 was Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, beating Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One.