2. MODEL GENTLEMAN
In my teens, I spent long hours in the attic at home during the school holidays making models of people. I’m particularly proud of this one I created in the summer of 1968: Barbie’s boyfriend Ken, dressed up as a Knight of the Garter.
The ostrich plumes come from the Privy Councillor hat of Sir Samuel Hoare [the late politician]. I stitched the robes myself. He must be the best dressed of all the Kens in the world.
3. RHAPSODY IN BLUE
Hugo cherishes a model of Barbie s boyfriend Ken, created in 1968 (pictured)
I campaigned in my teens for my late aunt Dame Joan Vickers when she became an MP – this is a portrait of her. On deciding to go into politics she asked Winston Churchill for his advice and he told her to wear a pretty hat.
“An extraordinary marionette of a woman, or was it a man? It wore grey flannel trousers, a wide leather belt, masculine overcoat, and a man’s brown felt hat, and had a really frightening appearance.”
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Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize
The critics’ top eight choices based on Christmas selections in national newspapers, the London Evening Standard, the TLS, The Spectator and the New Statesman. Plus, we take a look at some of the other best books which were released in 2020.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
The winner of this year’s Booker Prize is a tale of poverty, addiction and abuse set in and around Glasgow in the 1980s. Shuggie Bain’s mother is an alcoholic; his father, a violent, fitfully present taxi driver. As family members drift away, he becomes his mother’s sole carer – and it is their relationship that forms the novel’s emotional core. First-time author Douglas Stuart was praised for his poetic, slang-studded prose, and for his ability to find good in his characters, no matter how despicable their behaviour. Some critics, however, thought the book would have benefited from more rigorous editing.