ONE OF FIRST ACTS OF THE Irish novelist Paul Lynch in scooping last year’s Booker Prize and a cheque for £50,000 was to observe that now at least his mortgage was safe.
Two questions prompted by this admission are: what sort of state is the literary world in if the winner of one of our major literary awards has financial problems; and, in these circumstances, what hope is there for the rest of us? Why, to put the matter bluntly, do so many people at large in
