I got this info from a short essay Salman Rushdie wrote in 1993. Those of you who are into reading might get at least half as excited as I did when you lay your eyes on the lists, which obviously are not exhaustive but allow for quite a cluster of talented individuals.

In the early eighties these guys were given the weight label 'Best of Young British Novelists'. If Mr Salman Rushdie doesn't remember who were the bunch of literary critics who decided those and not other were the names and surnames on the lists, it is maybe not that important after all. Or maybe it is...

...I' ll try n google it...

Alright. The list was published in the literary magazine GRANTA, whose editor is Bill Bufford (Mr Rushdie did of course mentioned that further below. Why didn't I bother reading a bit further?) Anyway, here are the twenty writers:

Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Ursula Bentley, William Boyd, Buchi Emecheta, Maggie gee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alan Judd, Adam Mars-jones, Ian McEwan, Shiva Naipaul, Philip Norman, Christopher Priest, Salman Rushdie, Clive Sinclair, Lisa St Aubin de Teran, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain and E.N. Wilson.

In 1990's list included the following word weavers:

Ian Bands, Louis de Bernieres, Anne Billson, Tibot Fischer, Esther Freud, Allan Hollinghurst, Kazuo Ishiguro, A. L. Kennedy, Philip KErr, Hanif Kureishi, Adam Lively, Adam Mars-Jones, Candia MacWilliams, Lawrence Norfolk, Ben Okri, Caryl Phillips, Will Self, Nicholas Shakespeare, Helen Simpson and Jeanette Winterson