![]() ![]() ![]() In 1976, she became the very first female fellow of Jesus College: that was the beginning of her pathbreaking rise. She began by reading mathematics at Cambridge, following in her father’s footsteps, but broke away to English in her final year, becoming her own woman. The daughter of scientist, scholar and historian Jacob Bronowski and Rita Coblentz, a sculptor, she had her parents’ rigour and vision in equal measure. I must be honest and say that it took a while for me to really understand who she was, or rather what she was – the extent of her scholarship, the depth of her knowledge, her significance in the world of academia. Lisa and I had been friends long before we met to judge the Booker. Quite what cinema’s other patrons made of the five of us, embracing in our 3D glasses, I’ll never know. Ten years later, when the film of Life of Pi came out, we reunited for a trip to the movies. ![]() The 2002 panel remains, to my knowledge, the only group of Booker judges to have been on holiday together. It was a hilarious, wonderful weekend, full of great food and even better conversation. ![]() And that is how it came to pass that the five of us – along with Lisa’s husband, John Hare – celebrated our friendship with a reunion trip to to a little windswept town on the northern coast of France. ![]()
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