The international committee to choose the winner of the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup has at last been selected. The jury consists of Mr John Coulthart (UK), M. Jean-Luc Fromental (France), Mr Michael Moorcock (UK), Mr Martin Stone (France) and Mr Jeff VanderMeer (USA) who will meet to confer in the course of the following days. The winner will be announced after a traditional final meeting at a well-known brasserie in Paris by the end of July. This prize is not given every year. It is generally awarded for a work of fiction or body of work which, in the opinion of the committee, best celebrates the spirit of Jack Trevor Story, who died in 1992. As well as for his journalism, much of it published in The Guardian newspaper, Mr Story was known for such humorous novels as The Trouble With Harry (filmed by Alfred Hitchcock) and the Live Now, Pay Later trilogy featuring the ‘tally man’ Albert Argyll (played by Ian Carmichael). As well as the traditional cup, a cash prize is awarded. The conditions of the prize are that the money shall be spent in a week to a fortnight and the author have nothing to show for it at the end of that time. This is to recall Mr Story’s famous reply to the bankruptcy judge who enquired where a substantial sum of money paid to him for film rights had gone ? “You know how it is, judge. Two hundred or two thousand, it always lasts a week to a fortnight.’
