:00:05. > :00:10.Hello and welcome to our Culture Show Special on the BBC and the
:00:10. > :00:13.Samuel Johnson Prize for Non- Fiction 2011. We're at the Royal
:00:13. > :00:15.Institute of British Architects here in London for the awards
:00:15. > :00:23.ceremony where we'll soon find out which of this year's six
:00:23. > :00:28.shortlisted authors has scooped the coveted �20,000 prize. In the
:00:28. > :00:31.running this year.. .Political genius and flawed personality in
:00:31. > :00:35.Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg. Dictatorship and
:00:35. > :00:39.disaster in Frank Dikottor's Mao's Great Famine: The History Of
:00:39. > :00:41.China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. Historian John Stubbs
:00:41. > :00:48.explores the lives of wits, womanisers and wanderers in
:00:48. > :00:52.Reprobates: The Cavaliers Of The English Civil War. A vivid portrait
:00:52. > :00:58.of the bad boy of Italian art, Caravaggio: The Sacred And The
:00:58. > :01:01.Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Liberty's Exiles: The Loss Of
:01:01. > :01:07.America And The Remaking Of The British Empire, Maya Jasanoff
:01:07. > :01:11.traces the lives of defeated British loyalists. And finally one
:01:11. > :01:21.to rattle the cages of the doom mongers, The Rational Optimist: How
:01:21. > :01:25.
:01:25. > :01:28.Prosperity Evolves. Matt Ridley's claim that trade improves our lives.
:01:28. > :01:33.The BBC's Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is one of the most
:01:33. > :01:38.prestigious literary awards in the UK. Now in its 13th year, it is
:01:38. > :01:43.open to all genres of non-fiction, to the arts and current affairs.
:01:43. > :01:47.Now the vast majority of books sold in the UK are non-fiction, so it is
:01:47. > :01:52.no surprise, that as our appetite increases, so too does the
:01:52. > :01:56.importance of this prize. I'm joined now by John Mullan, the
:01:56. > :02:00.professor of literature at University College London. Ben
:02:00. > :02:05.Macintyre, who has the task of sharing the Judging Panel.
:02:05. > :02:10.Ben, it's been a fantastic year for non-fiction. How many entries were
:02:10. > :02:16.there? There were, I understand, a record 208 entries this year. More
:02:16. > :02:20.than r before. They span an incredible range of genres in the
:02:20. > :02:25.extraordinary depth, too. Once the idea of non-fiction was
:02:25. > :02:32.sort of standard biography of dead, white male. That is down by the
:02:32. > :02:36.board now. You had a wonderful mixing of genres -- genres going on.
:02:36. > :02:42.There are two standard biographies of dead white males, John, were you
:02:42. > :02:47.surprised by that No. There is a daunting biography of Bismarck. It
:02:47. > :02:52.looks as big as the subject. The prestige of the books, the interest
:02:52. > :02:57.of the books to the general reader is almost a constant of non-fiction
:02:57. > :03:02.across the centries. What is interesting is that there are other
:03:02. > :03:06.genres that almost have not existed for more than a decade or too, the
:03:06. > :03:12.Matt Ridley book which is on the shortlist which is a kind of genre
:03:12. > :03:15.of the way we live now, or the way that we think now. The way we will
:03:15. > :03:20.live tomorrow. So what about the way that we read
:03:20. > :03:26.now? Do you think that the tastes are changing? That readers are
:03:26. > :03:30.demanding more gripping narrative? I think that the readers have come
:03:31. > :03:36.to expect that authors of non- fiction, even like some here are
:03:36. > :03:40.academics might want to talk to people who are not just academics.
:03:40. > :03:43.Generally speaking, although there are sometimes problems and short
:03:43. > :03:48.cuts, I think that is an entirely healthy thing.
:03:48. > :03:52.Partly, this prize, I think it promise oats that expectation.
:03:53. > :03:57.John make as good point. We read in a different way. We expect our
:03:57. > :04:02.lives, the lives we are fascinated by to make us want to turn the page
:04:02. > :04:05.again. That is what we try to do with the Judging Panel, to find the
:04:06. > :04:09.books that will absorb, whether with narrative, character, or the
:04:09. > :04:14.quality of the writing, but that you really want to turn the pages,
:04:14. > :04:19.that is the key. So many books are different in
:04:19. > :04:23.genre, where do you even begin? That is the tricky thing? How to
:04:23. > :04:29.compare to utterly different books? We tried to simply choose what were
:04:29. > :04:33.the best books of the year. Without being side tracked into whether we
:04:33. > :04:38.were getting the right pat northern the list in the long list or the
:04:38. > :04:44.shortlist, but what were the stand- out books? The back k -- books that
:04:44. > :04:47.we would say you really want to read this. Not that you are
:04:47. > :04:51.interested in the subject, but that you have to read it.
:04:51. > :04:54.We will find out shortly who has won, but thank you very much for
:04:54. > :04:59.joining us. The first book offers a fresh
:04:59. > :05:02.perspective on mid-17th century royalism in Reprobates: The
:05:02. > :05:07.Cavaliers of the English Civil War, historian John Stubbs suggests that
:05:07. > :05:13.there is a lot more to the poet followers of King Charles than
:05:13. > :05:17.merely feathers, frills, foppery. In fact, the much-maligned
:05:17. > :05:22.cavaliers, helped to shape British culture. To separate the style from
:05:22. > :05:32.the substance, we sent satirist and broadcaster, John O'Farrell, to
:05:32. > :05:41.
:05:41. > :05:46.meet the author, to find out more They say that history is written by
:05:46. > :05:49.the winners, like all cliches, there is some truth in that, but
:05:49. > :05:57.any sharp historian knows that there are wonderful stories and
:05:57. > :06:01.characters to be salvaged from the losing side.
:06:01. > :06:09.And this is the swashbuckling truth in John Stubbs' Reprobates: The
:06:09. > :06:13.Cavaliers of the English Civil War. With their flamboyance, fashion and
:06:13. > :06:18.free-thinking, they are amongst the most irresistible characters in
:06:18. > :06:22.British history. Can you tell us about some of the
:06:22. > :06:27.main characters in this story? Who were they? Why were you drawn to
:06:27. > :06:33.them? Well, the characters that I focus on in the book are writers,
:06:33. > :06:40.it was a time in which most gentlemen of a certain education
:06:40. > :06:45.were amateurs of literature. For example Sir John Subtling, best
:06:45. > :06:51.known as a poet, gambler and theatre producer, who, when war
:06:51. > :06:54.with the Scots broke out in 1637 decided he could be a cavalry
:06:54. > :07:00.commander with disastrous consequences.
:07:00. > :07:05.He provided for the men, it made him the most stprak troop in the
:07:05. > :07:12.army. He treated the exercise as one of his pieces of personal
:07:12. > :07:19.theatre. His men brought a gasp of amazement wherever they road, this
:07:19. > :07:24.were, as a contemporary pointed out, 100 handsome men. Who he had clad
:07:24. > :07:28.in white dublets and breeches and Scarlett coats, hats and feathers,
:07:28. > :07:33.well horsed and armed. The mention of practical equipment, mounts and
:07:33. > :07:38.weaponry, that comes at the end of this account. Ins dental in
:07:38. > :07:43.comparison to the matter of uniform! So, why were you
:07:43. > :07:48.interested in write being them, in particular, the losers? Well, I was
:07:49. > :07:52.interested in where the word, "Cavalier" Came from. It is a word
:07:52. > :07:57.originally referring to a disluet sort of character. The cavaliers
:07:57. > :08:02.were given the name by their enemies it was a derogatory term, a
:08:02. > :08:08.term of abuse, but it became a badge of honour. They prooperated
:08:08. > :08:12.it and took it on. These were devil-may-care, upper-
:08:13. > :08:17.class, witty people? What was wit to them? It was really important.
:08:17. > :08:22.It was a scoring of a point with a good line. A good comeback. You
:08:22. > :08:25.know it took the form of duelling! It stopped people actually drawing
:08:25. > :08:33.swords and settling things in the field.
:08:33. > :08:38.So a sort of 17th century Have I Got News For You? A little bit! The
:08:38. > :08:42.men had wits and this placed certain demands on them. If the
:08:42. > :08:46.joke was there for the taking it was wrong to let it past or leave
:08:46. > :08:53.it to someone else. Battles of wit were a form of duelling. In which
:08:53. > :08:59.the best points came from using your adversary's own words against
:08:59. > :09:04.him. Wit was strongly aligned to masculinity. Since a wit was
:09:04. > :09:10.invariably male. Banter was like sword play, a man's wit was like
:09:10. > :09:14.his belied -- blade and so, predictably, rather like his penis.
:09:14. > :09:19.Were the cavaliers about more than their actions? Did their ideas, the
:09:19. > :09:22.flamboyance that they are renowned for, change attitudes? Their
:09:22. > :09:29.ideology was what the King says is best.
:09:29. > :09:34.The divine right of the king? I'm all right, Jack. They are also
:09:34. > :09:39.liberal in other ways. They are either sponsoring theatre or
:09:39. > :09:43.working in it. This were puritans? The first
:09:43. > :09:48.professional women writers were royalists. The cavaliers did have
:09:48. > :09:54.their part to pay in the process of liberalisation, if you like.
:09:54. > :09:59.So, has history by smirched the cavalier glass with their cavalier
:09:59. > :10:07.attitudes? Yes, and probably rightly so. It is the cavalier
:10:07. > :10:12.attitude, it is an aristocratic attitude. They are either
:10:12. > :10:17.aristocrats or people posing as them.
:10:17. > :10:24.So, aristocrats running the country and sitting in the Cabinet today?
:10:24. > :10:29.The supporters of both Charles I and the second needed cavalier
:10:29. > :10:34.writing, poetry, celebrating and pleasured lifestyle.
:10:34. > :10:40.They needed confirmation that the old days were better.
:10:40. > :10:43.But their real legacy consisted in not quite conforming to type. For
:10:44. > :10:47.on closer inspection, they were both more and less than real
:10:47. > :10:53.cavaliers. They offered a lasting suggestion of how, whether a
:10:53. > :11:03.society cleevs into warring parties, people remain more complex than
:11:03. > :11:07.
:11:07. > :11:11.Next up, an insightful biography of a brilliant strategist. Much has
:11:11. > :11:15.been written about the political career of German's Iron Chancellor,
:11:15. > :11:23.but in Bismarck: A Life, the American historian, Jonathan
:11:23. > :11:28.Steinberg has chosen to focus on the infuriating contradictions in
:11:28. > :11:34.his infuriating -- mercurial personality. Rory Stewart went to
:11:34. > :11:41.discover more about the statesman who cast such a long shadow in
:11:41. > :11:45.Bertie Ahern Germany. Perhaps no country in Europe -- in
:11:45. > :11:52.Germany. Perhaps no country in Europe has had no such influence on
:11:52. > :12:00.modern history as Germany. But 1 50 years ago there was no
:12:00. > :12:06.such thing as the United States -- United state called Germany. The
:12:06. > :12:10.creator of this modernified german state was perhaps the greatest
:12:10. > :12:15.creator of all time, Otto Von Bismarck.
:12:15. > :12:20.A politicians what strikes me about business mark is that he had one
:12:20. > :12:24.big idea, he wanted to create a unified Germany, despite the
:12:24. > :12:29.oppositions he got it done. Bismarck was seen by everybody as
:12:29. > :12:34.the Iron Chancellor. But in Jonathan Steinberg's
:12:34. > :12:41.fascinating book, something else emerges. A private, vulnerable man
:12:41. > :12:46.behind the iron exterior. The real Bismarck was a complex
:12:47. > :12:51.character. A Highbury condrak with a concity tuition of an ox. He
:12:51. > :12:55.always wore a uniform in public after a certain stage of his career,
:12:55. > :13:01.but one of the few never to certain in the king's regular army. His
:13:01. > :13:06.fellow youngsters came to distrust him. Too clever, too unstable, too
:13:06. > :13:12.unpredictable, not a proper chap, but all agreed he was brilliant.
:13:12. > :13:19.So, who was Bismarck? How do you explain who was Bismarck today?
:13:19. > :13:24.Born in 1815, dies in 1858, a man who unionifies Germany. A war
:13:24. > :13:28.against the French in 1807, he creates the Geremi that is there
:13:28. > :13:32.now, he puts the states stogt in a federation, that's the great
:13:32. > :13:36.Bismarck. The scale of Bismarck's triumph
:13:36. > :13:43.cannot be exaggerated. He told those who would listen what he
:13:43. > :13:49.intended to do and how, and he did it. With perfect justice in August
:13:49. > :13:53.1866 he pounded his fist on his desk and cried, "I have beaten them
:13:53. > :13:58.all" He is larger than life and intellectually he is larger than
:13:58. > :14:02.life. What all say is that once Bismarck gets into the stream, you
:14:02. > :14:06.cannot describe him. He is bewitching. Of course, I'm a
:14:06. > :14:12.historian, I am interested in the world, how we live in it, came to
:14:12. > :14:20.be. Bismarck is one of those who transformed it.
:14:20. > :14:26.This is what he wrote, "About 7.30, the prince invited zuebel and me to
:14:26. > :14:32.his study. He offered us his bedroom to reLee ourselves. We went
:14:32. > :14:38.in and found under the bed the two objects that we sought. As we
:14:38. > :14:43.stationed ourselves at the wall, Zuebel spoke from the depth of his
:14:43. > :14:48.heart, everything about the man is great, even his chit" In the
:14:48. > :14:53.bobbing you referred to him as a demonic figure, what do you mean by
:14:54. > :14:58.that? There was a power that contemporaries were aware of. They
:14:58. > :15:04.used this word frequently, it was said that "il est el diablo", he is
:15:04. > :15:09.the deily. This destructiveness, the power, of the capacity to
:15:09. > :15:14.flatten people, did have something uncanny about him. Lots of
:15:14. > :15:23.contemporaries called him that. So there is something in the
:15:23. > :15:29.psychological make-up, the powerful urge, the means of dominating.
:15:29. > :15:34.Did this have a re-election on his health? He was a hypochondriac. He
:15:34. > :15:39.had all kinds of terrible symptoms, if the king said a bad word to him,
:15:39. > :15:43.he would not come out of his room for a couple of days he was like a
:15:43. > :15:46.baby. Because he designed a system of government in which only he
:15:47. > :15:50.could make the decisions he had to decide on everything. The fact is
:15:50. > :15:55.he did not have the power, everything he did required the king
:15:55. > :15:59.to do it. That is part of the problem with business mash's career.
:15:59. > :16:08.He was obsessed with dominating people, but he was a servant.
:16:08. > :16:13.What did they see in him? We all now the picture, his image hung in
:16:13. > :16:19.every school room in over many a hearth. He embody and manifested
:16:19. > :16:24.the greatness of Germany. The image became itself a burden to
:16:24. > :16:28.successors. He made it impossible that Germany could get along with
:16:28. > :16:34.normal people. The new Kaiser comes, he wants to
:16:34. > :16:38.be a different king, a king of the people. His and Bismarck clash.
:16:38. > :16:43.Bismarck is dismissed. Something that could have happened at any
:16:43. > :16:48.time in the previous 20 years. Kaiser who sacks him is of course
:16:48. > :16:52.the Kaiser that leads Germany in the First World War? Yes.
:16:52. > :16:56.Sir Edward Gray says that Germany was like a battleship without a
:16:56. > :17:00.rudder. The reason is that the rudder was working only in the
:17:00. > :17:07.hands of Bismarck. When it collapsed, who could do it? The
:17:07. > :17:15.system could not work, that is the catastrophe. What would Bismarck
:17:15. > :17:18.have made of the weird 21st century situation? The nomination of
:17:19. > :17:25.celebrity prizes? He would like that, but if he didn't win he would
:17:25. > :17:29.not have been pleased! Next on the shortlist is Matt Ridley, who has
:17:29. > :17:33.turned his attention to free markets and produced a counterblast
:17:34. > :17:37.to all of 9 economic and environmental doom mongers out
:17:37. > :17:40.there. In The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, he argues
:17:40. > :17:44.that negative forecasting is out of control.
:17:44. > :17:50.He sets out to prove that mankind's unfailing ability to trade and
:17:50. > :17:53.share ideas will continue to improve our lives. Scientist Adam
:17:53. > :18:03.Rutherford went to find out why we should all be looking on the bright
:18:03. > :18:10.
:18:10. > :18:15.When you look at the numbers, the naughties are the best time to be
:18:15. > :18:22.alive. Our generation has enjoyed more peace, freedom, leisure time,
:18:22. > :18:28.education, medicine and travel than any other in history.
:18:28. > :18:35.Why are we so pessimistic? When there are such abundant reasons to
:18:35. > :18:39.be hopeful. Throughout history wise men and women and many nutters have
:18:39. > :18:43.predicted catastrophe, and apocalypse at the end of times. The
:18:43. > :18:48.reasons for the pessimism has changed over the years, but the
:18:48. > :18:53.doom mongering itself as remained unshakeable.
:18:53. > :18:57.That's why I'm looking forward to meeting the refreshingly optimistic
:18:57. > :19:02.Matt Ridley. So, did you start off as a
:19:02. > :19:08.rationalist or as an oment mist? started as a rationalist with a bit
:19:08. > :19:15.of a bias towards optimism. I noticed that the good news was not
:19:15. > :19:19.getting out there. I am a gloomy pessimist like everyone else, but I
:19:19. > :19:23.have managed to rationalise that the world is getting better.
:19:24. > :19:28.Pessimism dominates the news, what is it about humans that makes you
:19:28. > :19:34.feel optimistic? It is invasion. Constantly changing and constantly
:19:34. > :19:38.bringing in new ideas to replace old ones and combine with new wins,
:19:38. > :19:42.so the pessimists are right if we do nothing, we will be in trouble.
:19:42. > :19:48.For example if we use up the oil, we will use it up, but because of
:19:48. > :19:52.the way that we innovate, we will replace it. Substitute something
:19:52. > :19:56.else for oil. That is what we have done for the last thousands of
:19:56. > :20:00.years, innovated our way around any problem. That is what I think will
:20:00. > :20:06.continue. Human beings have started to do
:20:06. > :20:09.something to and with etch other -- each other that in effect build a
:20:09. > :20:13.collective intelligence. They had started for the first time to
:20:13. > :20:21.exchange things between unrelated and unmarried individuals. To share,
:20:21. > :20:26.swap, barter and trade. So you argue that this notion of
:20:26. > :20:33.trade is a unique human attribute, that is the thing that separated us
:20:33. > :20:37.from all of our ancestors? Well, I'm bringing a very evolutionary
:20:37. > :20:42.perspective to economics, I think that they are simple things. The
:20:42. > :20:46.key ingredient is a bottom-up view the world. That is key to genetics
:20:46. > :20:50.and natural selection, but it is key to understanding economics.
:20:50. > :20:56.What happens about the time we take off, about the time we go from
:20:56. > :21:01.being just another ape to a spectacular technological species
:21:01. > :21:05.with enormous impact on the planet is we start to exchange. No other
:21:05. > :21:10.animal does this, at least not between strangers. Once you start
:21:10. > :21:14.doing that, what you are doing is bringing together different ideas
:21:14. > :21:24.about how to do things, how to make things and allowing them to combine.
:21:24. > :21:28.It has the sim impact on culture that the invention of sex had on
:21:28. > :21:30.biological evolution. Ideas start to have sex.
:21:30. > :21:35.Innovators are in the business of sharing. It's the most important
:21:35. > :21:40.thing that they do, for unless they share their invasion, it can have
:21:40. > :21:47.no benefit for them or for anybody else. The one activity that got
:21:47. > :21:52.easier to do after 1800 and has gotten easier recently is sharing.
:21:52. > :21:57.Travel and communication, disseminated information, faster
:21:57. > :22:02.and further. Newspapers, technical journals, telegraphs have spread
:22:02. > :22:07.ideas as fast as they spread gossip. So, is the central thesis in the
:22:07. > :22:11.book that we have never had it so good? Yes it is certainly true we
:22:11. > :22:16.have never had it so good, but it does not mean this is as good as it
:22:16. > :22:20.gets. What we have today is a veil of tears compared to what we could
:22:20. > :22:26.achieve. We are not hithing the diminishing returns that the
:22:26. > :22:31.economists have been respecting for 200 years. It was thought we would
:22:31. > :22:35.experience diminishing returns, that iron out the deficiencies and
:22:35. > :22:38.there would be no improvements to gain, but there is accelerated
:22:38. > :22:43.growth. There is more growth around the world. Why is that? Because the
:22:43. > :22:47.ideas are not limited. It is not true that you run out of new ideas.
:22:47. > :22:54.The more new ideas you have, the more chance there is of finding new
:22:54. > :23:01.ones. If we are sharing ideas we are in a potentially infinite
:23:01. > :23:07.improvement in our lives. History repeats itself as a spiral,
:23:07. > :23:12.not a circle. With an everygrowing capacity for good and bad, played
:23:12. > :23:16.out through unchanging individual character, so the human race will
:23:17. > :23:23.continue to expand and enrich its culture, despite setbacks and
:23:23. > :23:28.people having the same evolved unchanging nature. The 21 st
:23:28. > :23:35.century will be a magnificent time to be alive. Dare to be an
:23:35. > :23:38.optimist! Great research is the life blood of factual writing, but
:23:38. > :23:46.new discoveries can be a challenge to accepted homeowner. That was the
:23:46. > :23:48.case with our next book by the Dutch academic Frank Dikottor. In
:23:48. > :23:51.Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating
:23:51. > :23:57.Catastrophe, the author trawled through recently released documents
:23:57. > :24:01.from China's rural archives to reassess the true costs of Mao Tse-
:24:01. > :24:05.tung's ill-conreceived Great Leap Forward. The author is a professor
:24:05. > :24:09.at Hong Kong University, the BBC Beijing correspondent, Damian
:24:09. > :24:19.Grammaticas, went to meet him to hear proof of Chairman Mao's role
:24:19. > :24:25.
:24:25. > :24:30.China in the 19 50s was one of the poorest nations on earth e, but Mao
:24:30. > :24:38.Tse-tung dreamt of transforming his country into an communist paradise.
:24:38. > :24:42.He launched the Great Leap Forward, a policy looks to revolutionise
:24:42. > :24:46.industry and putting China on the map.
:24:46. > :24:48.His goals were catalogued in Frank Dikottor's Mao's Great Famine: The
:24:48. > :24:51.History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. It is one of the most
:24:51. > :24:56.detailed accounts on the subject ever published.
:24:56. > :25:00.Can you explain a little by about Great Leap Forward that caused
:25:00. > :25:05.this? What was Chairman Mao trying to achieve with this? Chairman Mao
:25:05. > :25:10.sees the wealth of China in its people and in particular in the
:25:10. > :25:17.hundreds of millions of people who live in the countryside.
:25:17. > :25:25.And his attempt to catapult China's past its competitors consists in
:25:25. > :25:31.forging that massive population in one giant army.
:25:31. > :25:36., "Everyone a soldier, Chairman Mao had proclaimed at the height of the
:25:36. > :25:40.campaign, brushing aside a salary, a day off each week, or a
:25:40. > :25:44.prescribed limit on the amount of labour that a worker should carry
:25:44. > :25:49.out. A goient's people's army in the command economy would spont to
:25:49. > :25:53.-- respond to every Beck and call of its generals. Ever aspect of
:25:53. > :25:58.society organised along military lines in a continuous revolution"
:25:58. > :26:05.What do you pinpoint as the cause of 9 famine? The food shortages
:26:05. > :26:07.come about as many of the schemes simply don't work N this kind of
:26:07. > :26:13.radical collectivisation, farmers themselves have no incentive to do
:26:13. > :26:17.any work it is not just shortage of food, it is actually the
:26:17. > :26:21.distribution of food that matters. Food is used as a weapon. If I am
:26:21. > :26:25.in charge of the village and I think you are too old or too sick
:26:25. > :26:29.to actually work, I will ban you from the canteen.
:26:29. > :26:33.So what we tend to forget about this period is that people, it was
:26:34. > :26:43.not just the people that starved to death, people were being starved to
:26:44. > :26:45.
:26:45. > :26:48.death. , "Throughout the country a starved
:26:48. > :26:56.logic governed relationships between the rulers and the ruled.
:26:56. > :26:59.As there was not enough food to go around, the able workers were given
:26:59. > :27:06.preferential treatment while those considered idle, the children, the
:27:06. > :27:10.sick and the elderly were abused." China was exporting grain to Russia
:27:10. > :27:17.in return for nuclear expertise while this was going on? China goes
:27:17. > :27:20.on a shopping spree, importing massive amounts of equipment,
:27:20. > :27:28.including entire factories from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe.
:27:28. > :27:33.Then the bills come in. In November 1958, it was said by
:27:33. > :27:36.someone, "I would rather not eat than not honour our commitments to
:27:36. > :27:41.our foreign friends" By that he means he would rather export more
:27:41. > :27:45.grain to pay for the bills than to lose face.
:27:45. > :27:53.In your book you document an extraordinary level of violence
:27:53. > :27:58.that went on throughout Chinese? The violence struck me right away
:27:58. > :28:03.in the first week when I started working on the archives. There was
:28:03. > :28:08.a story of a boy who was tied up and thrown into a pond as he had
:28:08. > :28:13.stolen a handful of grain. There seemed to be a lot of those
:28:13. > :28:21.stories., "Violence became the routine rule of control. It was not
:28:21. > :28:26.used occasionally on the few to instil the fear on many, but it was
:28:26. > :28:33.used systematically, against anyone who seemed to dawdle, obstruct the
:28:33. > :28:36.process, let alone pilfer or steal by the majority of villagers"
:28:36. > :28:42.all of this is happening, people in their desperation are turning on
:28:42. > :28:48.each other, is that right? Families start collapsing. Fathers take away
:28:49. > :28:53.the food ration of their daughters, just outside of Nan chin is the man
:28:53. > :28:59.that takes the grain ration of his eight-year-old daughter and this
:28:59. > :29:02.girl dies of hunger. There are many accounts of people forced to make
:29:02. > :29:06.horrendousous choices. At the end of all of your research
:29:06. > :29:11.and work and writing of this, who do you think was responsible for
:29:11. > :29:16.this famine? There is one man who set this whole thing in motion, his
:29:16. > :29:22.name is Mao Tse-tung. Having said that, Chairman Mao
:29:22. > :29:27.would never have prevailed without the help, assistance and the
:29:27. > :29:33.support of key players around him. So this is not just one man it is
:29:33. > :29:40.also an entire system that is responsible for what happened.
:29:40. > :29:48.The number of people you calculate who were killed is almost double
:29:48. > :29:53.what others have said? On the basis of very detailed sats of statistics,
:29:53. > :29:59.I reached the conclusion that at least 45 million people died
:29:59. > :30:04.unnecessarily during that period. Is an unimaginable number of people.
:30:04. > :30:09.I still can't get my head around that. I suppose if you wished the
:30:09. > :30:14.sheer scope of death during that period and the American of death
:30:14. > :30:18.which make Chairman Mao's great famine stand out as one of the
:30:18. > :30:23.greatest man-made disasters in human history.
:30:23. > :30:28.Our second biography this evening is a vivid portrait of a brilliant
:30:28. > :30:31.but troubled artist, Caravaggio: The Sacred and the Profane, is by
:30:31. > :30:35.the art critic and Culture Show presenter, Andrew Graham-Dixon. A
:30:35. > :30:40.decade in the writing it preess -- pieces together the dark, dangerous
:30:40. > :30:48.and dirty deeds of the life of arguably the greatest Italian
:30:48. > :30:52.painter of the 17th century. It re- examiness the event of -- that
:30:52. > :30:56.marks Caravaggio's fall from grace. Sarah Dunant is an author as
:30:56. > :31:06.passionate about history as she is about art. She met Andrew Graham-
:31:06. > :31:10.Dixon to discover the truth about Caravaggio was not always the art's
:31:10. > :31:14.superstar that he is today. His renewed popularity has come from
:31:14. > :31:19.his work, but also from the fascination of his life as the
:31:19. > :31:25.brawling murdering bad boy of counterreformation Italy. In a
:31:25. > :31:29.culture with an insatiable appetite for the private lives of the famous,
:31:29. > :31:34.this combination of rep bait and genius has proved simply
:31:34. > :31:37.irresistible. It has taken Andrew Graham-Dixon ten years to write
:31:37. > :31:40.Caravaggio: The Sacred and the Profane, a biography which sets out
:31:40. > :31:47.to present new evidence and new theories on the painter's life and
:31:47. > :31:52.work. Caravaggio's life is like his art,
:31:52. > :31:57.a series of lightening flashes in the darkest of nights. A man who
:31:57. > :32:02.can never be known in full because almost all that he did, said,
:32:02. > :32:08.thought and lost is in the uncoverable past. Much of what is
:32:08. > :32:13.found here is found in the criminal archives of the time.
:32:13. > :32:17.Apart from those of the painting, these are crimes and misdemeanours.
:32:17. > :32:22.When Caravaggio emerges from the obscurity of his past, he says like
:32:22. > :32:27.the characters in his own paintings, as a man in the extremist.
:32:27. > :32:33.I suppose, Andrew, the first question is what took you so long?
:32:33. > :32:38.You mean, just ten years? Yes? Mostly, waiting for new leads to
:32:38. > :32:42.emerge, to play out. Very, very complicated archival research to be
:32:42. > :32:46.done. So, did you start knowing that
:32:46. > :32:51.there was more information to be discovered? I started by realising
:32:51. > :32:56.that I was in an unusual position. You are talking about somebody who
:32:56. > :33:01.is incredibly celebrated, loved as an artist. About him it is possible,
:33:01. > :33:06.suddenly, to write a really new book as people obsessed with
:33:06. > :33:11.Caravaggio have been digging and digging and digging and digging and
:33:11. > :33:16.finding and finding, but have published their research in tiny
:33:16. > :33:20.places. The main archival places have
:33:20. > :33:26.studied this for 30 years. There was a tiny little book
:33:26. > :33:30.printed in Latin. So there was a chance to show Caravaggio to the
:33:30. > :33:34.world. So everybody knows that there is this violent episode in
:33:34. > :33:42.his life? Caravaggio murdered a man. There are suggestions that there
:33:42. > :33:46.had been ill feeling for a while, but the key evidence is, which has
:33:46. > :33:50.emerged in recent years, is the fact that this was a dual. It was
:33:50. > :33:57.not just a fight that broke out, this was a dual. They had had
:33:57. > :34:00.enough, they had to settle it. So Caravaggio walks into his fate?
:34:00. > :34:05.Shrib rately. Yes, absolutely deliberately.
:34:05. > :34:13.-- deliberately. The dual does not last long. Real
:34:13. > :34:20.duals are short and sharp. At the climax, Caravaggio ceezs his
:34:20. > :34:25.initiative. He lungs the -- at the groin of his fallen opponent,
:34:25. > :34:30.piercing his fem ral artery. Caravaggio takes out his sword and
:34:30. > :34:35.then Thomas steps out of line to help his injured, bleeding brother.
:34:35. > :34:40.He draws the sword and strikes the painter in the head. Caravaggio,
:34:40. > :34:50.sturned by the injury can fight no more. Then the carnage stop zrb
:34:50. > :34:53.stops and everyone disperses. As the friend carries on, they
:34:53. > :34:58.unconsciousless reeenact, Caravaggio's alter piece in a
:34:58. > :35:02.nearby street. A solemn depiction of men struggling under er the
:35:02. > :35:07.weight of a heavy corpse. How far do you think that reading
:35:07. > :35:11.him in his own paintings and the images that one cease of him in his
:35:11. > :35:15.paintings tells you as much about the artist as it does the life?
:35:15. > :35:20.most obvious case of a picture, were if you read the facts much the
:35:20. > :35:30.life against the painting, that painting makes sense in a new way,
:35:30. > :35:32.
:35:32. > :35:41.it would be the famous David and Goliath. Where Checko is holding up
:35:41. > :35:47.the head of Goliath, who, here he is, Caravaggio, with this
:35:47. > :35:54.terrifying face. The death's head of Goliath is this self-portrait.
:35:54. > :36:02.He seems horrible, half dead, half alive, the right eye glazed over
:36:02. > :36:06.and closing with the left eye outraged in pain. He is like one of
:36:06. > :36:16.the damnetd souls in Dante's Inferno.
:36:16. > :36:21.Caravaggio painted David and Goliath and the painting was his
:36:21. > :36:25.darkly ingenious plea to the one man who could save him throughout
:36:25. > :36:32.the trial. His way of saying that the judge was welcome to have his
:36:32. > :36:36.head in the painting, if only he would let him keep it in real life.
:36:36. > :36:42.What did you discover, what was it about the process that allowed you
:36:42. > :36:47.to see a different Caravaggio? is somebody who has been turned
:36:47. > :36:51.into a ludicrous set of myths, I hope. What he emerges from in my
:36:51. > :36:55.book is actually a human being, a person, a complicated, strange
:36:55. > :37:00.person, but somebody whose actions are explicable. Somebody who lived
:37:00. > :37:05.in a world where particular codes of honour and violence were
:37:05. > :37:09.prevalent. He was not just a lunatic. He was a real man. A real
:37:09. > :37:13.person. Our final book may not be the first
:37:13. > :37:19.historical cow of the American Revolution and its aftermath, but
:37:19. > :37:21.it is the first to give a full voice to the losing side. In
:37:21. > :37:26.Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the
:37:26. > :37:33.British Empire, Harvard historian, Maya Jasanoff reworks the stories
:37:33. > :37:37.of those who fled America in 1783 to rebuild their lives in British
:37:37. > :37:43.colonies. Playwright and fellow American Bonnie Greer talks to the
:37:43. > :37:48.author about the disordeal die as pra -- diaspora that shaped the
:37:48. > :37:51.empire. Growing up in America you get the
:37:51. > :37:56.story of the American Revolution that is all really one sided. This
:37:56. > :38:02.is the story of the other side. This is the story of the people.
:38:02. > :38:08.The people, who, as you and I were taught as children, who lost.
:38:08. > :38:12.And you chose this subject. I'm very fascinated as to why.
:38:12. > :38:15.The story of the American Revolution is such a central story
:38:15. > :38:20.to who Americans think that they are, that it was important in a
:38:20. > :38:25.sense to get a full picture of who we really are and bring out the
:38:25. > :38:29.voices of the people who used to be written off as without history.
:38:29. > :38:34.Is that for any particular reason? Or do they move you more or
:38:34. > :38:38.interest you more? I think that I have always been drawn to history
:38:38. > :38:42.through lives, but I am drawn to the lives that seem the more
:38:42. > :38:47.obscure ones. It may abfunction of my own back ground in a sense as
:38:47. > :38:51.somebody who comes from mixed traditions and who has traveled a
:38:51. > :38:55.lot throughout my childhood and beyond. I'm really drawn to the
:38:55. > :39:01.stories of people who seem to cross borders and fall between the cracks
:39:01. > :39:06.and who are not neatly boxed into established categories. What if you
:39:06. > :39:11.hadn't wanted the British to Lee? Mixed in amongst the happy New York
:39:11. > :39:16.crowd were other less cheerful faces for the loyalists, the
:39:16. > :39:20.colonist who sided with them in the war, the departure of the troops
:39:20. > :39:24.sided worry, not tribulation. What sort of treatment could they expect
:39:24. > :39:30.in the United States? Would they be jailed? Would they be attacked?
:39:30. > :39:34.Would they be able to hold on to their jobs? Confronting real doubts
:39:34. > :39:38.in the United States, 60,000 loyalists decided to follow the
:39:38. > :39:42.British and take their chances elsewhere in the British Empire.
:39:42. > :39:47.You talk about the evacuation of New York. When I read that section
:39:47. > :39:51.it almost reminded me of the images that we saw in 9/11. It wasn't
:39:51. > :39:57.exactly that way, but it was the feeling that New York was on the
:39:57. > :40:00.run. The evacuation of New York city in 1783 was, I think, quite
:40:00. > :40:03.possibly the largest single transfer of population out of the
:40:03. > :40:07.United States. It is an amazing story, absolutely
:40:07. > :40:12.amazing, but also the largest evacuation that the British managed,
:40:12. > :40:16.we are talking about 30,000, 40,000 people. In order to get a sense of
:40:16. > :40:20.the bustle of what was happening I looked at the newspapers, the pages
:40:20. > :40:24.are crammed with little advertisements, advertisements for
:40:24. > :40:29.people selling off their goods. They have to leave. Advertisements
:40:29. > :40:34.telling people where the ships are sailing from. Announcements of
:40:34. > :40:37.meetings of people gathering together, figuring out where to go
:40:37. > :40:45.next. Letters written in from different parts of the empire to
:40:45. > :40:51.say come here, go there. The sheer demographic shock of
:40:51. > :40:58.Jamaica's society must have shocked even before they left the ship.
:40:58. > :41:05.This carried almost 2,000 other blacks on ward into continued
:41:05. > :41:10.slavery. Stepping off the convoy, the loyalists joined people of
:41:10. > :41:14.colour and free blacks living in Jamaica. As they made their way on
:41:14. > :41:19.to the streets of Kingston, they must have marvelled to find
:41:19. > :41:24.themselves for the first time in his life in a city where black
:41:24. > :41:30.faces outnumbered the white. What I came across in the research
:41:30. > :41:34.of the book is the loyalist claims to compensate the loyalists for
:41:34. > :41:37.what they lost. Thousands filed claims for this commission. They
:41:37. > :41:41.were all submitted to the office. The British state is good at record
:41:41. > :41:49.keeping, they are all in the National Archives, I went through
:41:49. > :41:53.the stuff to reconstruct the sense of loss and agitation and need and
:41:53. > :41:59.ambition, in a sense, from the dispossessed people to get as much
:41:59. > :42:03.back as they possibly could. Withen these bundles lurked stories
:42:03. > :42:09.of wartime devastation, adventure and personal trauma. It was here,
:42:09. > :42:14.for instance, that Thomas Brown told of his torture, ha John lick
:42:14. > :42:19.sten Stein explained he had been chased from his plantation and that
:42:19. > :42:23.Molly Grant told of her flight to Niagra.
:42:23. > :42:32.It showed a picture of Civil War. They give unusual insight into the
:42:32. > :42:39.columnists material world, forming a sort of unsystem altic colonial
:42:39. > :42:43.systems book. There were households, loss brass
:42:43. > :42:48.coffee pots, slick saddles, favoured garnet ear rings.
:42:48. > :42:52.Why do you think it is important today to have this book? This is a
:42:52. > :42:56.time when many are insecure of the foundations of their nations of
:42:56. > :43:00.their places in the world. These stories are about people living
:43:00. > :43:03.through a moment when their entire foundation was Yanked away. Yet
:43:03. > :43:08.they found a way forward, a way forward that in the United States
:43:08. > :43:12.is the founding of the, you know, the great beacon of liberty to so
:43:12. > :43:16.many through the ages. They found a way forward in the British Empire
:43:16. > :43:23.that had its vision of liberty that is a profound and wilful thing when
:43:23. > :43:33.seen at its best. Well, there we have it. Communists
:43:33. > :43:33.
:43:33. > :43:40.and Caravaggio, loyalists and rational optimists and a statesman.
:43:40. > :43:43.Six but only one winner. Time now to turn to the judge panel to find
:43:43. > :43:48.out who is the winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-
:43:48. > :43:52.Fiction. We now move to the tougher part of
:43:52. > :44:01.the evening, when we have to choose a winner from these extraordinary
:44:01. > :44:06.books. These are monumental works.
:44:06. > :44:12.There is a book that changes our view of the past and also Australia
:44:12. > :44:16.view of the present. Do you agree? I thought -- and also our view of
:44:17. > :44:23.the present. I thought it was an extraordinary
:44:23. > :44:30.read. In the details as they are unfolding, not just 46 million dead,
:44:30. > :44:34.but a third of all houses raised, grotesque damage to the ecosystem
:44:34. > :44:39.and chilling broughtallisation of the levels at the authoritarian
:44:39. > :44:45.state. It is almost too much. to unpick the whole thing, the
:44:45. > :44:50.whole thing is systematically, the reports, the statistics were wrong
:44:51. > :44:55.from the ground up. At each level they were more distorted. So the
:44:55. > :45:00.work of scholarship involved, taking the central figures, finding
:45:00. > :45:03.out how they compare with the locals once, comparing this was a
:45:03. > :45:07.very mathematical feat. And the evidence of how he got the
:45:07. > :45:10.material. He obviously knows the Chinese.
:45:10. > :45:15.All of these tiny little things, these pieces of information
:45:15. > :45:20.suddenly becoming available. This is very impressive. The effect is
:45:20. > :45:24.that this is all new information, newly researched, he has sources
:45:25. > :45:29.for everything. A very moving narrative. This book is changing
:45:29. > :45:34.history. It is certainly changing the West's view of China. Certainly
:45:34. > :45:43.the view in this country was that the cultural revolution was the
:45:43. > :45:49.real horror of the post 1949 China. We now know it was this Great Leap
:45:49. > :45:52.Forward. We move from the dark ness of
:45:52. > :45:57.Chairman Mao to Caravaggio, this extraordinary look at Caravaggio
:45:57. > :46:07.and his work and himself in a different way, do you agree?
:46:07. > :46:12.found Caravaggio illuminating. It is, you know, it is this
:46:12. > :46:17.extraordinarily... Written with great panache and enthusiasm it
:46:17. > :46:21.carries you along and puts you into Caravaggio's world but to me, what
:46:21. > :46:26.is most important about it, why we are interested in Caravaggio is
:46:26. > :46:31.that it takes the paintings and reads them so closely and not a bit
:46:31. > :46:35.of dirt under a finger nail is missed. The weighing of Caravaggio
:46:35. > :46:40.hanging in the gallery. The lovely bit in the beginning that says that
:46:40. > :46:45.the paintings are so dark, there is this intense boxes that they blow
:46:45. > :46:48.the other paintings off the wall. You cannot hang them next to
:46:48. > :46:51.anything else, you don't see the other paintings.
:46:51. > :46:55.And set beautifully in the historical context. I thought that
:46:55. > :47:01.I could smell the sewers of Rome going through this extraordinary
:47:01. > :47:07.life of his? It is a study of a life sacred and profane. Capturing
:47:07. > :47:12.the counter reformation in all of that. Making you think about what
:47:12. > :47:16.that Catholicism was all about. The demand in the Catholicism, that you
:47:16. > :47:21.look fully on the flesh, the blood of the suffering and he brings that
:47:21. > :47:24.and puts that into art. It is a wonderful book. Liberty's
:47:24. > :47:27.Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire by
:47:27. > :47:32.Maya Jasanoff is a past-breaking work. It opens up an area of
:47:32. > :47:37.history that has been explored but never in this kind of characterful
:47:37. > :47:41.depth. I found myself thinking that there are a dez books in here. It
:47:41. > :47:45.is a very important work of -- there are a dozen books in here. It
:47:45. > :47:50.is a very important piece of history, do you agree? Yes, I think
:47:50. > :47:54.it is ground breaking. I really envy it, I really wish I had
:47:54. > :48:00.written it myself. It has everything it has great
:48:00. > :48:03.characters, it has narrative drive and amazing scholarship and a
:48:03. > :48:07.fantastic new argument, it would change the way that the history of
:48:07. > :48:10.the British Atlantic is thought about. Before I suppose in the main
:48:10. > :48:15.stream, people thought of the American war of independence as
:48:15. > :48:19.this sort of invasion of the nasty Red Coats, but in fact, the
:48:19. > :48:25.loyalists were the cousins and the neighbours and the sons of the pait
:48:25. > :48:28.rots. So it is a Civil War. So I have never read a book that
:48:28. > :48:35.combines the vit and the bigger stories with the big historical
:48:35. > :48:38.themes, and they are so original as well. I learned so much about the
:48:38. > :48:45.first American Civil War and also about the British Empire and how
:48:45. > :48:52.progressive it was in many ways. And how interrelated they were.
:48:52. > :48:57.the loyalists in forcing the imperial centre to redefine the
:48:57. > :49:04.relationship with the colonial subjects. There is this dark matter,
:49:04. > :49:08.nobody has noticed it, but there is this extra matter e, and here it is.
:49:08. > :49:13.The loyalists have missed out in the British history, they are not
:49:13. > :49:16.interested in them and the American history, as they are this strange,
:49:16. > :49:22.Tory losers! We move to the The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity
:49:22. > :49:28.Evolves it is a wonderful profound robust and pungent argument, isn't
:49:28. > :49:34.it, David? It is confidence, polemic and make as lot of people
:49:34. > :49:40.cross, like it should. Matt Ridley has read so many books on our
:49:40. > :49:47.behalf. It is a great expend youm about ideas, about the way in which
:49:47. > :49:51.ideas have mated in the last 200 years and are doing so at an ever
:49:51. > :50:00.higher rate. It is not an angry book, did you
:50:00. > :50:05.find yourself uplifted by it? My highest compliment is that I
:50:05. > :50:08.went through dog-earring pages, thinking I will steal that for a
:50:08. > :50:13.column. That is a very high compliment!
:50:13. > :50:19.Absolutely, he is just fizzing and buzzing with ideas, light lit worn
:50:19. > :50:25.it is one of those extraordinary books of profound research and
:50:25. > :50:31.understanding and seems to wear it without any great aplomb? It is a
:50:31. > :50:34.brilliant wide-ranging essay. I did not agree with all of it, but I was
:50:35. > :50:39.eelectrified with it. He also has no truck with the idea that life
:50:39. > :50:46.was lovely in the past. That society was simpler, that people
:50:46. > :50:53.were nicer, so there is no nostalgia, and as a historian I ray
:50:53. > :50:59.gree. No woman should want to be born before the invention of sure
:50:59. > :51:04.vievable Caesareans, so I am with you there! This is true.
:51:04. > :51:11.From there we move to Bismarck, this great towering Hucking figure,
:51:11. > :51:18.looming over the 19th century. What an extraordinary genius, what a
:51:18. > :51:22.terrible monster. An extraordinary combination of paranoia, hype
:51:22. > :51:27.concrack, wit and charm and he describes that century.
:51:27. > :51:32.And what a good book. The notes are all there. The facts are all there
:51:32. > :51:36.and yet the narrative sweeps you along. I was transfixed by that
:51:36. > :51:41.book. So insightful about this extraordinary, charming monster. I
:51:41. > :51:45.did not agree with all of the grand, historical, political lines that
:51:45. > :51:52.Bismarck leads straight to Hitler, but that did not matter in a way.
:51:53. > :51:56.He gives you such a profound figure of this extraordinary fellow.
:51:56. > :52:01.Biographers often say that the subject is a man of contradictions,
:52:01. > :52:05.but in this case it is justified, you have the civilian who wares a
:52:05. > :52:12.union -- wears a uniform all the time. The man who is having
:52:12. > :52:19.tantrums, weeping. To have a doctor to pat his hand to
:52:19. > :52:24.sleep at night and then the monster with the guy normous chamber pots!
:52:24. > :52:28.Also, in some ways slightly depressing as I think we all
:52:28. > :52:32.nurture a fraint suspicion that politicians are slightly mad people
:52:32. > :52:39.who -- fate suspicion who just want to boss us around and here is the
:52:39. > :52:44.most successful politician in the 19th century and he is completely
:52:44. > :52:48.mad and his reason for living is to order everybody else around.
:52:48. > :52:53.And I love the relationship with Bismarck that the author has, you
:52:53. > :52:58.feel him being attracted and repelled at the same time. 7 It is
:52:58. > :53:04.that he is a monster, but our monster. I felt totally safe in his
:53:04. > :53:06.hands. I agree, a great guide to a
:53:06. > :53:09.monumental figure. Finally Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the
:53:09. > :53:15.English Civil War, a subject so buried in our national character,
:53:15. > :53:22.the notion of a cavalier, the flamboyant swashbuckler, on the
:53:22. > :53:26.losing side, who is wrong, but romantic. The texture, the
:53:26. > :53:31.knewanced portrait that John Stubbs gives us of a group of people who
:53:31. > :53:36.were extraordinary talented in many ways. Very feckless, a lot of them.
:53:36. > :53:42.They were not all rep row baits, but my God they got up to bad
:53:42. > :53:45.behaviour, right down to burning their own noses off to cure
:53:45. > :53:52.syphilis. An extraordinary group of men.
:53:52. > :53:57.I was glad to have John Subtling in there. The purpose of the book is
:53:57. > :54:02.to unpack the idea of the cavalier. It is much an idea as a group of
:54:02. > :54:11.biography, but we do have one cavalier cavalier in the book. As
:54:11. > :54:16.in the film, he had 100 young men in Scarlett britches riding into
:54:16. > :54:21.town and they had to be handsome. All with their brushed hair and the
:54:21. > :54:26.spectacle for everyone watching. But they are people of sew fist
:54:26. > :54:31.case too. Thinking profoundly about what they are up to at the same
:54:32. > :54:36.time with all of this theatre going And the mon kists committed to the
:54:36. > :54:45.idea of fighting -- and the monarchists committed to the idea
:54:45. > :54:49.of fighting, but at the service of this king who, really is rather
:54:49. > :54:58.austere and not cavalier at all. Yes, they are all thinking can't we
:54:58. > :55:03.warm him up a bit with a nice hat sm! Absolutely. I don't know in --
:55:03. > :55:09.Warm him up a bit with a nice hat on him.
:55:09. > :55:13.Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, we arrive at the crunch point. It
:55:13. > :55:19.is so difficult to choose a win frer the truly wonderful books, but
:55:19. > :55:25.the time has come. I want to thank my fellow judges who have been
:55:25. > :55:29.models of patience, and percent veerns and patience throughout this
:55:29. > :55:33.very gruelling but tremendously enjoyable process. Now has come the
:55:33. > :55:38.time to announce the winner for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-
:55:38. > :55:40.Fiction, the winner is Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most
:55:40. > :55:47.Devastating Catastrophe by Frank Dikottor.
:55:48. > :55:52.Congratulations! Absolutely brilliant! I'm going to hand frank
:55:52. > :56:00.the very large cheque for �20,000 with many congratulations! Thank
:56:00. > :56:04.you so much. I'm deeply humbled. You have brought me here tonight
:56:04. > :56:08.and I'm in extraordinary company, thank you so much.
:56:08. > :56:13.First of all can I thank the judges and those who organised the prize.
:56:13. > :56:21.Can I thank also my literally agent who believed in the project from
:56:21. > :56:27.the very beginning. Can I thank the entire Blooms by team, Michael in
:56:27. > :56:32.particular. They were wonderful. Can I thank Joe who collaborated
:56:32. > :56:35.with me in the project and spent a lot of time in remote regions
:56:35. > :56:41.collecting the memories of those who managed to survive, many of
:56:41. > :56:45.them are taking the memories of them to their grave.
:56:46. > :56:52.You did a terrific job. And last, but not least, can I
:56:52. > :57:02.thank my wife who has had to put up with me for a very long time. You
:57:02. > :57:03.
:57:03. > :57:09.take Poll Pot and the Kmer Rhouge we no a lot about that. Take that
:57:09. > :57:13.and multiply that by 20 and you get roughly nearly the horror of this
:57:13. > :57:17.period and this book tried to reconstruct the stories of the
:57:17. > :57:25.people who either died or who against all of the odds managed to
:57:25. > :57:29.pull through and survive. There is no memorial, no museum, no
:57:29. > :57:39.Recommend brans Day and not even a public debate to be mentioned about
:57:39. > :57:39.
:57:39. > :57:45.the years of horror. I think it was said that the
:57:45. > :57:55.executioner calls kills twice, the second time through silence. I very
:57:55. > :57:55.
:57:55. > :58:00.much hope that the sam sam -- Samuel Johnson prize will tribute
:58:00. > :58:07.to disturbing the silence and making a little bit of noise.
:58:07. > :58:11.Frank Dikottor is the winner of the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for
:58:11. > :58:15.Non-Fiction, he receive as cheque for �20,000. Well, we will leave
:58:15. > :58:19.you tonight from a reading from his winning book, Mao's Great Famine:
:58:19. > :58:23.The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. Good night.
:58:23. > :58:27.Tween 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Tse-tung,
:58:27. > :58:33.the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and through his
:58:33. > :58:38.country and frenzy in an attempt to leap forward, to catch up with
:58:38. > :58:43.Great Britain in less than 15 years, by unleashing China's greatest
:58:43. > :58:49.asset a labour force, Chairman Mao thought he could catapult his
:58:49. > :58:56.country past his competitors in the pursuit of a Utopian paradise,