Bookies’ favourite Hilary Mantel scooped the Man Booker Prize for Fiction tonight for her “demanding” novel about Henry VIII’s adviser Thomas Cromwell.

SHINING, crystallised flurries blow outside the window.

The mother of a teenage “happy slapping” victim today called for the sale of camera-phones to juveniles to be restricted in a bid to curb the bizarre craze.

Booker Prize-winner AS Byatt has taken a swipe at the Harry Potter books, saying they are for readers whose imaginations stretch to “soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip”.