Martha Kearney to judge 2013 Booker Prize The BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney is to be a judge for the 2013 Man Booker Prize alongside two academics, a literary reviewer, and a stand-up comedian turned classicist. As well as presenting The World at One on Radio 4, Kearney has also fronted The Review Show and was the chair of the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006. This year's Booker chair, the academic and nature writer Robert Macfarlane, hailed her as a "renowned broadcaster" while also highlighted her enthusiasm for bee-keeping. Describing herself as a "dedicated apiarist," Kearney presented the documentary Who Killed the Honey Bee? in 2009. Macfarlane is also joined by Oxford academic Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who won the Duff Cooper Prize this year for Becoming Dickens, and is a regular reviewer for the Telegraph. This will be somewhat of a reversal of roles for the two men: ten years ago Douglas-Fairhurst supervised Macfarlane's PhD on plagiarism in 19th-century literature. The fourth judge Natalie Haynes started her career as a stand-up comedian and was nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer Award in 2002. Since then she turned her attention to the classics: her Ancient Guide to Modern Life came out in 2010. Gyles Brandreth has described her as being "as wise as Socrates." She also writes journalism and is a frequent contributor to the BBC's Review Show. Stuart Kelly is a book reviewer for the Scotland on Sunday and the author of a biography of Sir Walter Scott, which was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He is also Reader-in-Residence for the MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University. In recent years the Booker Prize has been accused of choosing judges with a lack of literary knowledge who shortlist unworthy books. This led to the setting up of the rival Literature Prize, which claims to be more highbrow. But with two dons, a critic, a classicist and an artsy journalist on board this panel looks strong. Whether they will have the novels to match remains to be seen.