Booker victor Mantel joins the rich club

And the cheque for £50,000 goes to... Hilary Mantel. The 57-year-old novelist from Derbyshire was delighted to win the Man Booker Prize, of course, but the cheque itself will represent a drop in the ocean now that her historical epic Wolf Hall looks destined to become the bestselling Booker winner ever.

It has already threatened the dominance of Dan Brown's latest potboiler The Lost Symbol on one bestsellers list - an extraordinary achievement for a literary novel - and, with rave reviews in the US where publication coincides with the Booker victory, it looks set to become a mega-bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and propel Mantel into the exclusive club of wealthy, serious British novelists. Make that seriously wealthy British novelists.

Mantel had worried - like others in the publishing industry - that the popularity of the book and the fact that it was the bookies' clear favourite might work against it. "Having been a judge in 1990," she said after last night's prize-giving at the Guildhall, "I know anything can happen in that final meeting. I know being the favourite can weigh on the judges, and it can work in the opposite way."

In the event, a secret ballot of the five judges went 3-2 in favour of Mantel. It is not clear who the dissenting pair were backing.

Wolf Hall tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, the son of a London blacksmith who becomes Henry VIII's most powerful adviser and the architect of the Reformation. Mantel described the book last night as a study of power that might be set in the 16th century Tudor court but still resonates today.

"The exercise of power, the business of obtaining power, how it is won and lost ... we are still living in a Machievellian world," she said.

"Have you sent the book to Peter Mandelson?" asked James Naughtie, the BBC Today presenter who chaired the judges this year.

Wolf Hall was published in April in the UK by Fourth Estate and is published this month in the US by Henry Holt.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett was one of many British literary critics who gave it a warm welcome earlier this year. She wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that Mantel "makes that world at once so concrete you can smell the rain-drenched wool cloaks and feel the sharp fibers of the rushes underfoot".

First reviews in the US are equally positive. The New York Times literary critic Janet Maslin wrote on Sunday that the main characters were "scorchingly well rendered" and that "their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words".

Judges' chairman Naughtie said: "Our decision was based on the sheer bigness of the book; the boldness of its narrative; its scene-setting; the extraordinary way Hilary Mantel created a contemporary novel that happens to be in the 16th century."