The Booker Prize is named after Booker McConnell, formerly one of the UK's largest cash-and-carry companies. The Booker Authors' Division, set up by Jock Campbell, the managing director and an avid reader, purchased the copyrights of authors including Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer and Harold Pinter. In 1968, Campbell capitalised on the division's success by joining forces with the Publishers Association to set up the Booker Prize.

1969 The first Booker Prize is won by P.H. Newby (right), the former controller of BBC Radio 3, for Something to Answer For, an exploration of the 1956 Suez crisis set in Cairo.

1976 Melvyn Bragg presents the first live television broadcast of the Booker Prize ceremony.

1982 Thomas Keneally (below) wins with Schindler's Ark, despite debate over whether his novel is fiction or nonfiction. Schindler's Ark goes on to become one of the most commercially successful Bookers, selling more than a million copies.

1989 Amid much contention, London Fields by Martin Amis is excluded from the longlist after Maggie Gee and Helen McNeill, the judges, deem the novel misogynistic.

1992 The prize is split between Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (right). After the controversy that the decision aroused, the rules were changed to ensure only one winner.

1993 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's 1981 winner, is named The Booker of Bookers to celebrate the prize's 25th anniversary.

1999 J.M. Coetzee becomes the prize's first double winner with Disgrace, after taking the prize in 1983 for The Life and Times of Michael K.

2001 To end speculation about how decisions are reached, the longlist is made public for the first time.

2002 The Man Group, a global provider of investment products, is named the new sponsor of the award. The prize-money increases from £20,000 to £50,000.

2004 The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (below) becomes the first novel with a strong gay theme to win the prize.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

Times Recommends

• iD: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century by Susan Greenfield
• David Fickling, saviour of the great British comic
• Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind by Philip Ball