Shortlist for UK's most prestigious non-fiction award covers politics, history and the natural world
Margaret Thatcher confronts war, revolution, Roman history and the short-haired bumblebee on a shortlist for the £20,000 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, which holds up a mirror to Britain's varied past.
Martin Rees, astronomer royal and chair of the judges said: "They are very different, but each has enlightened and entertained the judges. The authors have conveyed specialised, and in some cases unfamiliar, subjects in a refreshing and readable way, revealing new perspectives."
The first volume of Charles Moore's official biography of Margaret Thatcher is the heavyweight contender on the list, weighing in at 896 pages. A very different rightwing politician, the Italian romantic poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, is the subject of Lucy Hughes-Hallett's biography, The Pike, which charts how he became a revolutionary and declared himself commandante of the city of Fiume in modern-day Croatia.
The Guardian's chief arts writer, Charlotte Higgins, sets out around Britain in pursuit of the Romans in Under Another Sky, while William Dalrymple heads for Afghanistan in his account of the first Anglo-Afghan war. Twenty thousand British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and established the throne of Shah Shuja ul-Mulk in 1839. Two years into the occupation, the Afghan people rose up, forcing the British into retreat.
David Crane tells the story of Fabian Ware, who founded the Imperial War Graves Commission during the first world war, while the conservationist Dave Goulson offers an account of life inside a nest of short-haired bumblebees, in A Sting in the Tale.
"Each of the authors approaches their subject in a very different way," said one of the prize judges, James McConnachie. "The list is extremely diverse, but all the books are written in a way that communicates the writer's passion about their subject to the reader. And they're all creative – they innovate and excel."
McConnachie and Rees are joined on the panel by the political writer and historian Peter Hennessy, the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, and the classicist Mary Beard.
The winner of the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction will be announced on 4 November.
Shortlist at a glance
David Crane: Empires of the Dead (William Collins)
William Dalrymple: Return of a King (Bloomsbury)
Dave Goulson: A Sting in the Tale (Jonathan Cape)
Charlotte Higgins: Under Another Sky (Jonathan Cape)
Lucy Hughes-Hallett: The Pike (4th Estate)
Charles Moore: Margaret Thatcher (Allen Lane)
0 comments:
Post a Comment