Last night’s Colman Getty PEN Quiz saw the Association of Author’s Agents – the ‘Agile Agents’ – take first place followed closely by the publishers, HarperCollins. Members of the winning team, led by the literary agent Derek Johns, included: Giles Foden, Daisy Goodwin, Martin Rowson, Louisa Young, David Miller, Paul Marsh and Natasha and James Fairweather.
The night’s proceedings were brilliantly supervised by Dara Ó Briain, presenter of BBC’s Mock the Week and a regular panelist on QI and Have I Got News for You. The great and the good from the world of publishing battled it out through six gruelling rounds of quiz questions. All eyes were on AN Wilson to see if he would answer correctly a question in the picture round relating to his own book. Thankfully, he did.
As the evening drew to a climax, Daisy Goodwin took to the stage to announce the results of the raffle which included a Christmas cake baked by Nigella Lawson, lunch with Giles Coren, a set of this year’s shortlist for the Man Booker Prize, signed by the authors and a personalised Monopoly set which was won by the author Susie Boyt.
English PEN are delighted to have raised over £35,000 from the evening. The Quiz provides essential funds to support PEN’s work defending freedom of expression, campaigning on behalf of persecuted writers worldwide and promoting literature and literacy.
Jonathan Heawood, Director of English PEN, said: ‘Every year the Quiz gets bigger and better. Sadly, this was our last year at the Café Royal. Next year will see some changes but the great spirit of the evening will always stay the same.’
English PEN would like to thank Dara Ó Briain; Daisy Goodwin; Marcus Berkmann; Colman Getty; the Café Royal; AP Watt; William Hill.
Teams for 2008 included Association of Author’s Agents; Bloomberg; Canongate / Atlantic; Colman Getty; Faber; HarperCollins; Hodder Headline Murray; HW Fisher; JFL Search and Selection; Little Brown; London Book Fair; Nielsen Book Data; Orion; Penguin; Poet in the City; Prospect / Political Quarterly; Reader’s Digest; Reynolds Porter Chamberlain; Romantic Novelists’ Association; Silence; Simon and Schuster; The Daily Mail; The Guardian; The Independent; The Observer; The Times;
Lee Henshaw, captain of the losing team, Silence, has written a report on his own team’s experience of the evening.
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/events/reportsonrecentevents/colmangettypenquiz2008/