Julian Barnes wins Man Booker Prize

Barnes's winning novel, The Sense of an Ending, was hotly-tipped to win the award soon after this year's list of nominees was announced.

The novel - Barnes's 11th, and one of his shortest, at 150 pages - tells the story of two friends, as one of them, Tony Webster, reminisces over their relationship during school years, troubled as it was by the shadow of suicide and uneasy romance.

Barnes, 65, was the only established name on this year's shortlist, which was largely made up by off-the-radar novelists and even some first-timers, such as Stephen Kelman with Pigeon English - about Ghana-born 11-year-old who encounters trouble when arriving in London - and A.D. Miller with Snowdrops, a psychological thriller set in Moscow.

The other British novelist to make it to the shortlist is Carol Birch with Jamrach's Menagerie - a picaresque story of seafaring boy Jaffy Brown, set in the 19th century - while two Canadian writers were also selected: Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues spins a dark tale of jazz and Nazism during WWII Germany, while Stephen deWitt makes history by penning the first ever Western to be nominated for the Booker with The Sisters Brothers, which follows contract killers Eli and Charlie Sisters, who set out to kill and inventor who, as it turns out, could in fact make them very rich.

This year's Booker Prize has stirred some controversy after the jury announced its mission to consider books that were 'readable' as well as intellectually stimulating to be up for the prize.

However, by awarding the Booker to Barnes, it could be said that the controversy has been quelled, as the author - who was nominated for the award for three times over the past couple of decades - is considered to be one of Britain's leading novelists.