As you probably know, John Banville (pictured) has just won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with The Sea.

The Irish-born writer was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989 for his novel, The Book of Evidence, but was pipped by Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. This year, however, the tables have turned with The Sea swamping Ishiguro’s shortlisted Never Let Me Go.

A strange sort of double has also occurred: Iris Murdoch, also born in Ireland, was awarded the Booker Prize in 1978 for a book called The Sea, the Sea. Spooky?

And this is the second consecutive win for Picador - which published last year’s winner, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty.

Banville is a former literary editor of the Irish Times, and the first Irish author to laugh all the way to the bank since 1993, when Roddy Doyle won with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. There's quite a lot more about the man, including a good long interview, here, a great link sent in by VUP's Craig Gamble, who is a big Banville fan.