The BBC has announced the long list for the annual (BBC Radio 4) Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. The award is open to any non-fiction title and grants the winner £20,000. Winner will be announced on June 30th on BBC TWO’s The Culture Show… Or you can just come back here, we’ll post the winner.
Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed
Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
Pompeii by Mary Beard
A Fork in the Road by Andre Brink
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton
Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
Leviathan by Philip Hoare
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd
Darwin’s Island by Steve Jones
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar
The Man Who Invented History by Justin Marozzi
Hester: the Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson’s ‘Dear Mistress’ by Ian McIntyre
A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History by Adam Nicolson
The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani
The House of Wittgenstein by Alexander Waugh