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2008 - The Winner
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale, a pacy analysis of a murder case in a Wiltshire country house in 1860 which inspired detective genre writers including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, was tonight named the winner of the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008. The author, Kate Summerscale, the tenth winner of the Prize, wins £30,000.
This is the second win in a row for publisher Bloomsbury whose startling account of Baghdad’s Green Zone, Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran won the 2007 Prize.
Rosie Boycott, Chair of the judges, made the announcement at an awards ceremony held in the Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre. She commented:
“The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a dramatic page-turning detective yarn of a real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. Kate Summerscale has brilliantly merged scrupulous archival research with vivid storytelling that reads with the pace of a Victorian thriller. The book is a rare work of non-fiction that mimics suspense genre and leaves one gripped until the final paragraph. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, who became the most celebrated detective of his day, is a complex, shabby character who immediately conjures up images of the scruffy looking LA cop, Columbo and even of Rebus. The Road Hill murder case was to dominate newspaper headlines and caused national hysteria, and inspired a generation of novelists from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle. We can’t think of a better winner for the 10th year of the Prize.”
The other shortlisted titles were
- Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher (Vintage)
- Crow Country by Mark Cocker (Jonathan Cape)
- The Whisperers by Orlando Figes (Allen Lane)
- The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French (Picador)
- The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (Fourth Estate)
Rosie Boycott was joined by an eclectic panel of judges who offered a wide range of literary, journalistic and academic experience. They are literary editor of the Guardian, Claire Armitstead; poet, Daljit Nagra; Director of the Science Museum, Chris Rapley; and documentary maker and journalist, Hannah Rothschild.
BBC FOUR will televise the awards ceremony at 10pm on Sunday 20th July and features complementary programming all presented by Kirsty Wark on the channel and on-line support on www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour.
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)
THE WINNER
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder At Road Hill House
by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment. Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.
 Kate Summerscale was born in 1965. She is the author of the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, which won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. She has also judged various literary competitions including the Man Booker Prize. She lives in London with her five-year-old son.
“Very simply, this is a fantastic book, fantastically written and it's a book of deep moral purpose.” Ekow Eshun, Newsnight Review
Notes to Editors
- Kate Summerscale may be available for interview after the announcement is made at 20:30 hours on 15th July. She is not available for comment before
- Electronic images of the winning book and author and the 5 shortlisted titles are available from Colman Getty
- Photographs of the judges and the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction logo are available from Colman Getty
- The judges may be available for interview and can be contacted through Colman Getty
- There were 20 books on the longlist from a submissions list of 131 and 31 call-ins
- Each of the five shortlisted authors are awarded £1,000
- The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is open to books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. Books published in English by writers of any nationality are eligible for the prize, provided they are published in the UK between 1 May 2007 and 30 April 2008
- The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is managed by a steering committee and administered by Colman Getty. The steering committee is made up of Stuart Proffitt, Chair, (Publishing Director, Penguin), Antony Beevor (historian and author), Mark Bell (Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual Independents, BBC ), Peter Florence (Director of the Guardian Hay Festival), Martin Grindley (independent bookseller), Dotti Irving (Chief Executive, Colman Getty), Adam Kemp (Commissioner, BBC Arts), Mervyn King (Governor, The Bank of England), James Naughtie (broadcaster, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme), Alan Rusbridger (Editor of The Guardian), Peter Straus (literary agent, Rogers, Coleridge and White) and Martin Taylor (International Adviser for Goldman Sachs)
BC FOUR will televise the awards ceremony at 10pm on Sunday 20th July and features complementary programming all presented by Kirsty Wark on the channel and on-line support on www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour
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