As the stage version of his take on Great Expectations opens in Adelaide, the novelist looks back at a right royal kerfuffle – and a memorable encounter with a London cabby

It was 1997. Peter Carey was the ballsy Australian author who, having already won the Brits’ biggest literature prize (the Booker) and shrugged off any shred of colonial insecurity, saw fit to reimagine one of the greatest works of English literature – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – from the perspective of an Australian convict.

A year later, Jack Maggs won the Commonwealth prize – but it wasn’t until he was at the ceremony that Carey, a vocal republican, learned that his prize included a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II.