British vs American writers

'When the Man Group, an investment house, first began sponsoring the original Booker Prize in 2002, they proposed expanding the prestigious award beyond the Commonwealth and Ireland to include Americans. (The company wanted to spread its name in the States.) But that plan met with curious resistance, setting off a debate about national cultural identity that played out in heated exchanges in the British press. What surprised me, as an American living in London, was not that a rule change in a literary prize could make such a splash -- in English cultural life, absolutely anything can become the touchstone of gossip and debate -- but rather the thrust of the argument that ensued. The English, as a rule, don't think much of Americans. Yet many didn't think they stood a chance competing against American writers. As Lisa Jardine, a historian and former Booker Prize judge, lamented at the time, ''With someone like Roth at his best, I can't see how an Amis or a McEwan would touch them.''' Read on.