Gillian Anderson looked the epitome of sophistication as she joined smart Charles Dance at the Booker Prize 2024 winners event on Tuesday night.

The actress, 56, wore a beautiful dark red dress as she posed at the literary event held at Old Billingsgate.

She completed the look with a pair of strappy black heels to boost her height and wore her blonde tresses pulled back.

Also at the event was actor Charles, 78, looked smart in a black suit which he wore with a patterned scarf. 

British author Samantha Harvey became the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize.

Gillian Anderson looked the epitome of sophistication as she joined smart Charles Dance at the Booker Prize 2024 winners event on Tuesday night

Actor Charles, 78, looked smart in a black suit which he wore with a patterned scarf as he arrived

Her book Orbital, about astronauts looking down at Earth, was named as the winner of the £50,000 prize and trophy at the ceremony held in the City of London.

Harvey, who was longlisted for the prestigious literary prize in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness, is the 19th woman to win since the first award in 1969. There have been 36 male winners.

The Queen was one of the first to send the author her congratulations, after meeting her earlier today – saying the novel was ‘brilliant’. 

Harvey, from Bath, said she had ‘no idea how to deal with’ her win at the 2024 Booker Prize as she took to the stage following her victory.

She said she was ‘overwhelmed, vicariously’ when Irish author Paul Lynch, a friend of hers, won last year, and ‘can’t believe’ she is in the same position.

She said: ‘Gosh, I have no idea how to deal with this. I have not expected it. I’m completely overwhelmed.’

Harvey dedicated the prize to ‘everybody who does speak for, and not against the earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life and all the people who speak for and call for and work for peace’.

‘I suppose it’s fair to say that no Booker speech has ever been made in a perfect world. It’s hard to not acknowledge the imperfections of the world that we live in today.’

The actress, 56, wore a beautiful dark red dress as she posed at the literary event held at Old Billingsgate

She completed the look with a pair of strappy black heels to boost her height and wore her blonde tresses pulled back

She looked as classy as always in the midi dress

Charles cut a dapper figure at the event

British author Samantha Harvey became the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize

She posed with her award at the prize ceremony in London

Five years ago, the gong went jointly to two women, British author Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale sequel The Testaments.

It was last won by a British author when Glasgow-born Douglas Stuart was named the 2020 Booker Prize winner for Shuggie Bain.

Harvey joined the likes of Gillian, Charles, Sara Pascoe, Sir Lenny Henry, Ruth Jones and TV historian David Olusoga at the star-studded ceremony.

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Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: ‘Orbital wins the prize in a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history.

‘A book about a planet ‘shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want’, about an ‘unbounded place’ with no wall or barrier visible from space, with all politics ‘an ᴀssault on its gentleness’, it is hopeful, timely and timeless.’

Speaking with The Guardian, she continued: ‘Zooming right out let me escape our web of concerns about our impact on each other and on the planet.’

Born in Kent, Harvey said that she had been watching the ISS live camera ‘for years’, and had become immersed in the beauty it showed.

Describing it as ‘space pastoral’, she said the characters are ‘just part of the image, not the lens’ – and her key hope was to ‘do justice in words to the beauty of the Earth and how I feel about the unnerving fact of its aloneness’.

Harvey’s novel takes place over a 24-hour time frame, following six astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station over 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. 

It touches on the death of a loved one, a typhoon coming, and the fragility of human life.

Harvey, a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, where she herself went to university, previously told the BBC that she wrote the book between successive lockdowns.

Sir Lenny Henry (L) and Lisa Makin attend The Booker Prize 2024 winners announcement

Author Elizabeth Day and her husband Justin Basini were also in attendance

Comedian Tom Allen wore a smart velvet suit

She told Radio 4’s Front Row: ‘I was writing about six people trapped in a tin can. It felt like there was something resonant about that and our experience of lockdown, of not being able to escape each other and also not being able to get to other people.’

This year, a record number of women were shortlisted for the Booker, with five nominated in total.

The best-selling book of the shortlist, with 29,000 copies sold in the UK this year, Orbital is also the second-shortest Booker winner, just behind Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which won the 1979 prize.

It has also won The InWords Literary Award 2024 and the 2024 Hawthornden Prize for Literature.