From bar to barrista
The Whitbread prize – worth £50,000 to the winner – is moving. Previously the literary award was associated with the Whitbread conglomorate, whose most obvious public face has been their pub and brewery business. Now Costa Coffee, a part of the Whitbread empire, will be taking over the sponsorship deal.
I can’t help feeling a little sad about this. Coffee, cake and books have an obvious association, and one I’m happy to revel in whenever possible, but the old literary motifs of smoky pubs, roaring drunks and scintillating conversation are fading fast. These days we think of JK Rowling in the cafe, not Dylan Thomas in the pub.
I grew up in a pub and I have a nostalgia for the conceit that claimed writers somehow produced their best ideas at the end of an evening’s debauch and scribbled them on the nearest beer mat which they shoved in their pocket as the landlord manhandled them out the door.
2 Comments
B.A. Goodjohn
8th June 2006Do you still have to be a UK resident to enter for the Whitbread?
Kay Sexton
9th June 2006Well, there have been arguments about this in recent years, but the current rules state Whitbread that a writer has to have been living in the UK or Ireland for at least six months of each of the previous three years.