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Titles on topics from Second World War bombers to the life of Roald Dahl have been longlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011. The list of 18 books also includes Edmund De Waal’s Costa-winning The Hare with Amber Eyes. The prize is worth £20,000.
Ben Macintyre, chair of the judges, said: “After some intense and robust debate, and only small amounts of bloodshed, we have come up with a longlist that reflects the extraordinary quality and range of the books published in this stellar year for non-fiction.”
The judging panel also comprises Prospect editor-at-large David Goodhart; journalist and author Sam Leith; biographer Branda Maddox; and historian, writer and broadcaster Amanda Vickery.
A shortlist of six will be announced on 14th June. The prize ceremony, on 6th July, will be broadcast on a special edition oF BBC2’s “The Culture Show” on 7th July.
The longlist in full:
Tolstoy by Rosamund Bartlett (Profile Books)
Afghantsy 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)