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Highly acclaimed novelist and Booker winner Ian McEwan talks to Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden about his life and work and receives the prestigious Bodley Medal for his outstanding contribution to literature.

McEwan is the author of many award-winning and critically acclaimed novels including The Child in Time, winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, winner of the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement, Saturday, winner of the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, On Chesil Beach, and Solar. His most recent novel is Sweet Tooth, a story about Cambridge undergraduate Serena Frome who is being groomed for work with MI5 in the Cold War era of the 1970s. She is sent on a secret mission that brings her into the world of promising young writer Tom Haley. She begins to love the man, but can she keep her cover of espionage? And must she abandon the first rule of espionage – to trust no one?

McEwan’s achievements will be recognised at the end of this event by the award of the Bodley Medal by Bodley’s Librarian, Richard Ovenden. The medal is awarded by the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of culture, learning, science and communication. Past winners include writer and actor Alan Bennett, film director Lord Richard Attenborough, inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee, technology pioneer John Warnock, and last year’s recipient, the novelist Hilary Mantel.