‘STELLAR YEAR’ OF BIOGRAPHY DOMINATES BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON LONGLIST
The judges for the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize announced the longlist today, Friday, 15 April.
The 18 titles on the longlist range widely in interest and subject matter, and confirms the prize’s reputation for highlighting diverse and thought-provoking books. The prize is worth £20,000 to the winner.
The list includes a provocative exploration of how culture affects language; the history of a family told through 264 ivory and wood carvings; a non-fiction thriller of a horrific crime and subsequent trial in Japan; an intimate exploration of sexuality in marriage in early and mid twentieth-century England; the history of China’s most devastating catastrophe and a biography of one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
Ben Macintyre, chair of the judges, comments:
“After some intense and robust debate, and only small amounts of bloodshed, we have come up with a long list that reflects the extraordinary quality and range of the books published in this stellar year for non-fiction.”
Mark Bell, BBC Commissioning Editor, Arts said:
“We are delighted to continue to present the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction this year as part of Books on the BBC. I am pleased The Culture Show will continue to give BBC TWO audiences the chance to watch the judges whittle down this enticing list.”
The full longlist:
• Tolstoy by Rosamund Bartlett (Profile Books)
• Afgantsy by Rodric Braithwaite (Profile Books)
• Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher (William Heinemann)
• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal (Chatto & Windus)
• Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury)
• Caravaggio by Andrew Graham Dixon (Allen Lane)
• Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasanoff (HarperPress)
• Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky (Bloomsbury
• Scott-land: The Man Who Invented a Nation by Stuart Kelly (Polygon, Birlinn)
• People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (Jonathan Cape)
• The Bridge by David Remnick (Picador)
• The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (Fourth Estate)
• Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg (Oxford University Press)
• Reprobates by John Stubbs (Viking)
• Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock (HarperPress)
• Bomber County by Daniel Swift (Hamish Hamilton)
• Sex Before the Sexual Revolution by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher (Cambridge University Press)
• Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy (The Bodley Head)
Chaired by best-selling author and Times journalist Ben Macintyre, the panel consists of Prospect editor-at-large David Goodhart; journalist and author Sam Leith; prize-winning biographer Brenda Maddox; and best-selling historian, writer and broadcaster Amanda Vickery.
As part of Books on the BBC 2011, a special edition of BBC Two’s The Culture Show featuring coverage of the shortlisted books will be broadcast on 7 July at 7pm and repeated at 11.20pm.
Former winners
1999 Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin)
2000 Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (The Penguin Press)
2001 The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (Macmillan)
2002 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan (John Murray)
2003 Pushkin: A biography by T.J. Binyon (HarperCollins)
2004 Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta)
2005 Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (Picador)
2006 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber)
2007 Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Bloomsbury)
2008 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)
2009 Leviathan or The Whale by Philip Hoare (Fourth Estate)
2010 Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
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