A chat with …

… The bionic book worm - Features - Books - The Independent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

He has announced the six novels to compete for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize in a year he believes has been "strongest for a decade". He chaired the judges and made sure each of his colleagues had read all those in the initial running in what proved a gruelling process.

"It was hard work. In a normal year, you might read 20 novels. So to read 145 in seven months is an unnatural act," he says. "But it's an important unnatural act because in a way literary criticism is an unnatural act. It is work, a technique, a skill."