Man Booker Prize winner Flanagan: 'This was the book I had to write'
Australian author Richard Flanagan has won this year's Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road To The Deep North, inspired by his father's experience as a prisoner of war on the Thailand-Burma death railway.
Mr Flanagan, who lives in Tasmania, was presented with the £50,000 prize at an awards dinner at London's Guildhall by The Duchess of Cornwall.
The author's father died aged 98 on the day the novel was finished.
He told Newsnight's Kirsty Wark the book was an emotional journey - a novel he ''could not escape'' writing.