THERE are always ways to measure the distance between then and now. Take 1983, 40 years ago. The year Margaret Thatcher won a landslide victory in the General Election. The year New Order released Blue Monday, then the sound of the future; now the sound of heritage radio. The year Local Hero came out. It was all Bill Forsyth comedies around here back then.

And 1983 was the year of the first Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, a gather-up of the possibly great and the potentially good authors of the age. It’s a list full of familiar names now: Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Pat Barker, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Rose Tremain, Graham Swift and, of course, Martin Amis, son of Kingsley (see, nepo babies existed then too).

Looking back, it’s also a list that’s largely male and largely white. It makes for an interesting comparison with the latest list for 2023 which came out earlier this month.

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With 15 women, four men and one trans-masculine author (K Patrick, who is these days based on Lewis), it’s fair to say that the big picture of British literature has shifted. What we are seeing, the Guardian has suggested, is “the decline of the Great White Male and the rise of the Millennial Woman”.

It seems a fair summary, though it’s also worth noting that the Scot on the current list, Airdrie-born Graeme Armstrong, a former gang member and now author of the much-praised novel about gang culture, The Young Team, could hardly be further removed in life or fiction than the 1983 Scottish representative, William Boyd, who was born in Africa and attended Gordonstoun and Jesus College, Oxford.

Armstrong’s inclusion in the list is a reminder that diversity is not only about identity in the 21st century. It is also about class. Hasn’t it always been?

Actually, as an aside, there are four Scottish-based authors on the list.

As well as Armstrong and K Patrick, authors Camilla Grudova and Sarah Bernstein live here, which arguably makes the new list the best Scottish result since 2003, when AL Kennedy, Andrew O’Hagan and Alan Warner all made the cut (though the best Scottish performance of all came in 1993 the year the late Iain Banks, the late Philip Kerr, Candia McWilliam and AL Kennedy all made the top 20).

The Herald: Candia McWilliamCandia McWilliam (Image: free)

There is an inevitable arbitrariness to such lists. You can easily point to the writers Granta has missed over the years (Hilary Mantel’s name is flashing on and off in big, block letters at this point). And there’s no cut-off to creativity, a fact recognised by the literary agent Jenny Brown who has just launched a new prize for debut writers over 50.

And, yes, lists are marketing exercises. But there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. In an age when newspapers are cutting back on book pages, when the media in general seems less and less interested in literary fiction, anything that gets people talking about books is a good thing.

That is one of the most obvious differences between then and now. The 1983 list reminds us that Amis, Barnes et al were soon to be central figures in the culture. (Not always, necessarily, in ways they would want to be, as Rushdie continues to know all too well.) The great white male author was a trope that still had a lot of traction back then.

With the exception of such outliers as Sally Rooney - who can’t make the Granta list as she’s Irish - you can’t yet say the same about the female millennial novelist today.

But that perhaps says more about a media that remains predominantly male and middle class, one which all too often seeks out its own reflection.

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In the end, of course, what matters is the work. As Zadie Smith, who appeared on two previous Granta lists, has pointed out, “lists don’t make novels good: only novelists can do that.”

Someone somewhere is even now sitting at a desk, working on a book that will change how we see the world.