- Richard Mabey
- Fiona MacCarthy
- Ian McDonald AA
- Ian McEwan CBE
- Robert Macfarlane
- Roger McGough CBE
- Patrick McGrath
- Shena Mackay
- Denis Mack Smith CBE FBA
- Rory MacLean
- Margaret MacMillan
- Candia McWilliam
- Brenda Maddox
- Noel Malcolm FBA
- David Malouf
- Norman Manea
- Alberto Manguel
- Philip Mansel
- Hilary Mantel CBE
- Patrick Marber
- Patrick Marnham
- Adam Mars-Jones
- Philip Marsden
- Rosalind Marshall
- Allan Massie
- Douglas Matthews FCLIP, Benson Medallist
- Glyn Maxwell
- Derwent May
- Geraldine McCaughrean
- Ved Mehta
- Edward Mendelson
- Jeffrey Meyers
- Mary Midgley
- Karl Miller
- Michael Millgate
- Pankaj Mishra
- Rohinton Mistry
- Julian Mitchell
- Deborah Moggach
- Caroline Moorehead OBE
- Geoffrey Moorhouse
- Elaine Morgan
- Michael Morpurgo OBE
- Jan Morris CBE
- Blake Morrison
- Nicholas Mosley (Lord Ravensdale MC)
- Sir Andrew Motion
- Ferdinand Mount (Bt)
- Paul Muldoon
- Alice Munro
- Richard Murphy
Jennifer Johnston – Year of election 2009
Jennifer Johnston is an Irish writer – Ireland, she has said, is her
“main theme” – and the author of more than a dozen novels. The daughter
of a writer and an actress, she only started writing at the age of 35.
“I just woke up one morning,” she said, “and thought, ‘I must do
something with my life.’ ” Her first novel, The Captains and the Kings, published in 1972, won the Author's Club First Novel Award, and The Old Jest
(1979) took the Whitbread Novel Award. Five years ago Roddy Doyle
caused outrage at a Joyce gathering in New York when he said that Ulysses needed a good editor and that James Joyce was not the best Irish writer – that title was Jennifer Johnston's.
“She has created a world of her own,” Derek Mahon has written. “Of such material is the finest literature made.”