Bookworm

IS THERE no stopping Wolf Hall's dominance of the shortlists for Britain's major literary prizes?

Apparently not, for this week Hilary Mantel's stupendous novel about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power made it onto the shortleet of the granddaddy of them all – the James Tait Black award, founded so far back in the mists of time (well, 1919) that the Man Booker is a stripling by comparison.

As well as the Man Booker, Wolf Hall has now been shortlisted for the Costa best novel, the Orange, the new Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction (to be announced on 19 June). It completes a unique clean sweep by being shortlisted for the James Tait Black, which is organised by the University of Edinburgh and announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.

Mantel's rivals for the 10,000 fiction prize include Strangers by Anita Brookner, The Children's Book by AS Byatt, Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro and American debut novelist Reif Larsen's The Collected Works of TS Spivet.

For the non-fiction award, also worth 10,0000, the shortlist includes Blake Bailey's mammoth biography of John Cheever, Jann Parry's detailed account of the life of ballet dancer and choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, and John Carey's study of William Golding.

Two biographies with strong Edinburgh links – Martin Stannard's life of Muriel Spark and Robert Morrison's The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas de Quincey – complete the list.

Whoever wins, let's hope there is no repetition of the chaos and confusion that bedevilled last year's James Tait Black awards ceremony, which took place almost entirely in the dark at the Edinburgh book festival's main tent after a generator failed – a ceremony swiftly immortalised as the James Tait Blackout.

POET'S CORNER

Not all writers seek out the limelight, and at the StAnza poetry festival at St Andrews in March attendees were aware of one such – a handsome bearded man in a white hat who (politely) accosted festival visitors and asked them to contribute to an improvised poetry collection he was putting together to raise money for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

The "pavement poemcatcher", as he calls himself (Andrew to his friends, apparently), has been as good as his word, and the resulting book, Quake: Built from Nothing, has just been published. It's a small-scale venture, with only 79 copies left for sale (10 each, proceeds to charity).

Copies will be hard to get hold of in bookshops (there's no ISBN number, for example), but the pavement poemcatcher promises that a goodly supply will be available at tonight's Sherlock Meets his Violin concert at Edinburgh's Usher Hall celebrating the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Tickets for the concert, which begins at 7:30pm and features music by Vivaldi, Elgar, Bartok and Gershwin, are 8.50. But remember to add on 10 for the poemcatcher's work of anarchic altruism.