Last night Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize, taking a prize worth nearly $80,000 for her novel, “Wolf Hall”–a historical biography about Henry VIII’s adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Last year Aravind Adiga won the annual prize for “The White Tiger.” According to The Daily Beast, the judges included (among others) a TV comedian, a literature professor, and a radio reporter.

Here’s more from the article: “The winner of literature’s prestigious Man Booker gets £50,000 for a work that can take years. It’s less than a third of what the Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney (who, I suspect, has never read a novel) gets in a week. Shortlisted candidates pick up a check for £2,500–and a year’s free membership in Soho’s Groucho Club. Pity the country, to paraphrase Brecht, that needs literary heroes.”