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2003 - Longlist
Sex and Gardening feature in an eclectic and wide-ranging
longlist
The judges for the UK’s most valuable prize for non-fiction
today (Saturday 29 March, 2003) announce the longlist
for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize 2003. The prize is
worth £30,000 to the winner and £1,000 to each
of the shortlisted authors.
Eighteen titles, which range in subject from reproduction
to rock gardening and include an outstanding roll-call of
biographies, make up the longlist for The BBC Four Samuel
Johnson Prize. The prize aims to reward the best of non-fiction,
from biography to travel writing, from popular science to
the arts and current affairs.
Rosie Boycott, Chair of the judges, comments:
‘With subject matter as diverse as rock-gardening, the white Mughals
of India and the varieties of reproduction in the natural world written as
letters from an agony aunt, this is an incredibly rich, strong and varied longlist.
We are also delighted to find so many women writers on the list.
‘Of course, we’ve also been blessed by a number
of very strong biographies and history books. Coming up with
the longlist was a reasonably easy process, but bringing
this down to a shortlist, and finally finding a winner will,
I suspect, be very hard’.
The judges this year are an eclectic and impressive panel:
Rosie Boycott (Chair); Member of Parliament, Michael Portillo;
Science Editor of the Guardian, Tim Radford; historian and
writer, Andrew Roberts; and literary editor of The Economist,
Fiammetta Rocco.
The shortlist for the prize will be announced at Samuel
Johnson’s House on Tuesday 29 April. The winner
of The BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2003
will be announced at an Awards Dinner at the Savoy Hotel
in London on Monday 9 June.
THE LONGLIST:
| Author |
Title |
Publisher |
Peter Ackroyd |
Albion: The Origins of
the English Imagination |
Chatto & Windus |
| TJ Binyon |
Pushkin: A Biography |
HarperCollins |
| Laura Blumenfeld |
Revenge: A Story of
Hope |
Picador |
| Deborah Cadbury |
The Lost King of France:
Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XV11 |
Fourth Estate |
| William Dalrymple |
White Mughals: Love
and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India |
HarperCollins |
| Jenny Diski |
Stranger on a Train:
Daydreaming and Smoking around America with
Interruptions |
Virago |
| Orlando Figes |
Natasha’s Dance:
A Cultural History of Russia |
Allen Lane |
| Aminatta Forna |
The Devil That Danced
on the Water: A Daughter’s
Memoir! |
HarperCollins |
| Martin Gilbert |
The Righteous: The
Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust |
Doubleday |
| Ramachandra Guha |
A Corner of a Foreign
Field: The Indian History of a British Sport |
Picador |
| Selina Hastings |
Rosamund Lehmann |
Chatto & Windus |
| Olivia Judson |
Dr Tatiana’s
Sex Guide to All Creation: The
Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex |
Chatto & Windus |
| Mary Laven |
Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in
the Renaissance Convent |
Viking |
| Fiona MacCarthy |
Byron: Life And Legend |
John Murray |
| Nicola Shulman |
A Rage for Rock Gardening:
The Story of Reginald Farrer, Gardener, Writer and
Plant Collector |
Short Books |
| Claire Tomalin |
Pepys: The Unequalled
Self |
Viking |
| Jenny Uglow |
The Lunar Men: The
Friends Who Made the Future |
Faber & Faber |
| Edgar Vincent |
Nelson: Love and Fame |
Yale University Press |
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