Novelist Hollinghurst ‘thrilled’ to be knighted by the King
Former Booker Prize winner Sir Alan Hollinghurst said the award made him ‘pleased for writing and for the novel’.
A “thrilled” Alan Hollinghurst was knighted by the King and said “it is lovely” that the art of novel writing is getting such attention.
The 70-year-old writer, who was honoured for his services to literature, earned the Booker Prize with The Line Of Beauty in 2004, the first work of gay fiction to win the prestigious literary award.
Speaking after a ceremony at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, Sir Alan said: “I am thrilled and astonished by it really. All I have done is sit at home and write books which is the thing I enjoy doing and find most fulfilling.
“It is a very extraordinary reward for having done that.
“Without sounding pompous about it, it also makes me very pleased for writing and for the novel.
“It is lovely that this art form should get this kind of recognition.
“There are about half-a-dozen novelist knights and it is very special. To have that kind of attention paid to writing is very pleasing to me.”
Sir Alan also said the honour will spur him on for the future.
He said: “I think it does. I brought out a big book about six months ago and I am not writing another at the moment – but this is tremendous encouragement to carry on.”
At a time when he could be considering retirement “this has been a great shot in the arm,” he added.
Sir Alan was born in Gloucestershire and went on to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he later became a lecturer, before moving to London.
The former Times Literary Supplement deputy editor’s first novel, 1988’s The Swimming-Pool Library, was a critical and awards success and dealt with being gay in intimate detail, something that was rare at the time.
It would go on to win the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and the 1991 Forster Award.
He then published The Folding Star, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and The Spell, before writing 2004’s The Line Of Beauty.
His novel, set during the Margaret Thatcher years and framed by her 1983 and 1987 general election victories, was not seen as the favourite to win the Booker Prize in 2004.
In 2006, Pride And Prejudice screenwriter Andrew Davies brought the novel to the small screen with a BBC adaptation starring Downton Abbey actor Dan Stevens as Nick and Blackadder star Tim McInnerny as Gerald Fedden.
Sir Alan has gone on to follow up the book with The Stranger’s Child, dealing with gay themes during the First World War, which made the Booker longlist; won the French literary prize Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.
His books, The Sparsholt Affair in 2017 and Our Evenings in 2024, also deal with gay and class themes.
Sir Alan was elected to the Royal Society of Literature in 1995 and was made an honorary fellow by Magdalen College in 2013.
