The judges take great satisfaction in awarding the 2006 Geraldine Pascall Prize to Robert Forster, for the popular music columns he has written for The Monthly magazine. Robert Forster’s work is characterized by its sparkle, its ease of reference and his ability to make vivid to the reader his own particular insights. He manages to write about popular music not only with the feeling for musical values of someone who has worked as a musician, but with an expert feeling for the show business context and with a masterly sense of the history of his subject. This means that at any point in one of his articles the reader’s imagination is kindled by a critical awareness of the giants of the past. She may not know the work of the particular artist under review, but  becomes potently aware of the comparative context as the names of all sorts of famous figures – Springsteen, Barbara Streisand, you name it – are invoked by way of illumination, often in unpredictable and imaginative ways.

Robert Forster is one of those rare critics so possessed of both charm and intellectual clarity that his work can be read with pleasure (and instruction) by people who are not especially interested in his subject. For those who are, he is a godsend because he writes about popular music with an authority and grace which would be rare in any area of criticism and is all the more striking in a field where criticism is often merely modish. It gives the judges particular pleasure to give the 2006 Geraldine Pascall Prize to a critic who is also such an eloquent and engaging writer.