Dylan gives lecture worth £715,000 in Nobel prize money

BOB DYLAN has delivered the lecture required for him to receive his 2016 Nobel Literature award, and collect eight million Swedish kronor (£715,000) in prize money.

In the speech, Dylan said that unlike literature his songs were meant to be sung not read and that they only needed to move people, not to make sense.

The Swedish Academy’s decision to award last year’s prize for literature to Dylan, who had “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, was seen by some as slap in the face by some mainstream writers of poetry and prose.

In his lecture posted on the academy’s website, the media-shy Dylan said: “If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means.” He tells how Buddy Holly and a Lead Belly record transported him as a teenager into an unknown world, and discusses three of his favourite books: Moby-dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.