Japanese-born British author and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro moved to the UK with his family in 1960, when he was five years old. Since then he has become one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction writers in the English-speaking world.

Among his many accolades are four Booker Prize nominations, winning in 1989 with THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, written in first person, recounting the butler Stevens’ professional and personal relationship with a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton. The 1993 film version starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson was nominated for eight Academy Awards. His 2005 novel NEVER LET ME GO was also shortlisted for the Booker, with TIME magazine citing it as the Best Novel of the Year and was also adapted into a successful film in 2010.

Last year the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the citation, as a writer “who, in novels of great emotional force has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” This year he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

Sir Kazuo signed my sketch at the Artists Entrance to the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday as he arrived to take part in the ‘Series Man Booker 50’, celebrating half a century of the prestigious literary prize.