Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize win earlier this week was announced in much of the British press as a victory by a “gay” novel. But it’s much more than that. “I only chafe at the ‘gay writer’ tag if it’s thought to be what is most or only interesting about what I’m writing. I want it to be part of the foundation of the books, which are actually about all sorts of other things as well – history, class, culture. There’s all sorts of stuff going on. It’s not just, as you would think if you read the headlines in the newspapers, about gay sex.”