It took M John Harrison three days to write his acceptance speech for the Booker Prize. “How do you write with any kind of authenticity about the thing you don’t think you’re going to get?”, he says on Tuesday, the day after his victory. The author of The End of Everything, an uncanny, dystopian novel, wasn’t the bookies’ favourite. “I thought I had a decent chance at the longlist, and I might even have a go at the shortlist,” he tells me.