Forget the Nobel – it’s the Samuel Johnson prize that really excites

Spare a thought for the authors in the running for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: the announcement of its shortlist yesterday was somewhat overshadowed by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with the nation’s literati stampeding as one to frantically Google ‘Patrick Mondiano novelist’. The clash is rather a shame, as this year’s set of nominations are an interesting and unusual bunch, in what the Financial Times says is ‘a vintage year for non-fiction’: if the novel is indeed dead, there won’t be any shortage of worthwhile alternative reading-matter.

In part the list is remarkable for its preponderance of female authors, dispiriting though it is that such a fact is remarkable: this is the first instance in the award’s 16 years of the women outnumbering the men. A few of the famous names studding the longlist have fallen by the wayside: there’s no space for the autobiographies of Jonathan Meades (An Encyclopedia of Myself) or John Carey (The Unexpected Professor), nor for In These Times, Jenny Uglow’s history of Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.

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Notwithstanding the elimination of Carey and Meades, there has been talk of this year’s having been a