BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011: A Culture Show Special The Culture Show

Hello and welcome to our Culture Show Special on the BBC and the

Samuel Johnson Prize for Non- Fiction 2011. We're at the Royal

Institute of British Architects here in London for the awards

ceremony where we'll soon find out which of this year's six

shortlisted authors has scooped the coveted �20,000 prize. In the

running this year.. .Political genius and flawed personality in

Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg. Dictatorship and

disaster in Frank Dikottor's Mao's Great Famine: The History Of

China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. Historian John Stubbs

explores the lives of wits, womanisers and wanderers in

Reprobates: The Cavaliers Of The English Civil War. A vivid portrait

of the bad boy of Italian art, Caravaggio: The Sacred And The

Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Liberty's Exiles: The Loss Of

America And The Remaking Of The British Empire, Maya Jasanoff

traces the lives of defeated British loyalists. And finally one

to rattle the cages of the doom mongers, The Rational Optimist: How

Prosperity Evolves. Matt Ridley's claim that trade improves our lives.

The BBC's Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is one of the most

prestigious literary awards in the UK. Now in its 13th year, it is

open to all genres of non-fiction, to the arts and current affairs.

Now the vast majority of books sold in the UK are non-fiction, so it is

no surprise, that as our appetite increases, so too does the

importance of this prize. I'm joined now by John Mullan, the

professor of literature at University College London. Ben

Macintyre, who has the task of sharing the Judging Panel.

Ben, it's been a fantastic year for non-fiction. How many entries were

there? There were, I understand, a record 208 entries this year. More

than r before. They span an incredible range of genres in the

extraordinary depth, too. Once the idea of non-fiction was

sort of standard biography of dead, white male. That is down by the

board now. You had a wonderful mixing of genres -- genres going on.

There are two standard biographies of dead white males, John, were you

surprised by that No. There is a daunting biography of Bismarck. It

looks as big as the subject. The prestige of the books, the interest

of the books to the general reader is almost a constant of non-fiction

across the centries. What is interesting is that there are other

genres that almost have not existed for more than a decade or too, the

Matt Ridley book which is on the shortlist which is a kind of genre

of the way we live now, or the way that we think now. The way we will

live tomorrow. So what about the way that we read

now? Do you think that the tastes are changing? That readers are

demanding more gripping narrative? I think that the readers have come

to expect that authors of non- fiction, even like some here are

academics might want to talk to people who are not just academics.

Generally speaking, although there are sometimes problems and short

cuts, I think that is an entirely healthy thing.

Partly, this prize, I think it promise oats that expectation.

John make as good point. We read in a different way. We expect our

lives, the lives we are fascinated by to make us want to turn the page

again. That is what we try to do with the Judging Panel, to find the

books that will absorb, whether with narrative, character, or the

quality of the writing, but that you really want to turn the pages,

that is the key. So many books are different in

genre, where do you even begin? That is the tricky thing? How to

compare to utterly different books? We tried to simply choose what were

the best books of the year. Without being side tracked into whether we

were getting the right pat northern the list in the long list or the

shortlist, but what were the stand- out books? The back k -- books that

we would say you really want to read this. Not that you are

interested in the subject, but that you have to read it.

We will find out shortly who has won, but thank you very much for

joining us. The first book offers a fresh

perspective on mid-17th century royalism in Reprobates: The

Cavaliers of the English Civil War, historian John Stubbs suggests that

there is a lot more to the poet followers of King Charles than

merely feathers, frills, foppery. In fact, the much-maligned

cavaliers, helped to shape British culture. To separate the style from

the substance, we sent satirist and broadcaster, John O'Farrell, to

meet the author, to find out more They say that history is written by

the winners, like all cliches, there is some truth in that, but

any sharp historian knows that there are wonderful stories and

characters to be salvaged from the losing side.

And this is the swashbuckling truth in John Stubbs' Reprobates: The

Cavaliers of the English Civil War. With their flamboyance, fashion and

free-thinking, they are amongst the most irresistible characters in

British history. Can you tell us about some of the

main characters in this story? Who were they? Why were you drawn to

them? Well, the characters that I focus on in the book are writers,

it was a time in which most gentlemen of a certain education

were amateurs of literature. For example Sir John Subtling, best

known as a poet, gambler and theatre producer, who, when war

with the Scots broke out in 1637 decided he could be a cavalry

commander with disastrous consequences.

He provided for the men, it made him the most stprak troop in the

army. He treated the exercise as one of his pieces of personal

theatre. His men brought a gasp of amazement wherever they road, this

were, as a contemporary pointed out, 100 handsome men. Who he had clad

in white dublets and breeches and Scarlett coats, hats and feathers,

well horsed and armed. The mention of practical equipment, mounts and

weaponry, that comes at the end of this account. Ins dental in

comparison to the matter of uniform! So, why were you

interested in write being them, in particular, the losers? Well, I was

interested in where the word, "Cavalier" Came from. It is a word

originally referring to a disluet sort of character. The cavaliers

were given the name by their enemies it was a derogatory term, a

term of abuse, but it became a badge of honour. They prooperated

it and took it on. These were devil-may-care, upper-

class, witty people? What was wit to them? It was really important.

It was a scoring of a point with a good line. A good comeback. You

know it took the form of duelling! It stopped people actually drawing

swords and settling things in the field.

So a sort of 17th century Have I Got News For You? A little bit! The

men had wits and this placed certain demands on them. If the

joke was there for the taking it was wrong to let it past or leave

it to someone else. Battles of wit were a form of duelling. In which

the best points came from using your adversary's own words against

him. Wit was strongly aligned to masculinity. Since a wit was

invariably male. Banter was like sword play, a man's wit was like

his belied -- blade and so, predictably, rather like his penis.

Were the cavaliers about more than their actions? Did their ideas, the

flamboyance that they are renowned for, change attitudes? Their

ideology was what the King says is best.

The divine right of the king? I'm all right, Jack. They are also

liberal in other ways. They are either sponsoring theatre or

working in it. This were puritans? The first

professional women writers were royalists. The cavaliers did have

their part to pay in the process of liberalisation, if you like.

So, has history by smirched the cavalier glass with their cavalier

attitudes? Yes, and probably rightly so. It is the cavalier

attitude, it is an aristocratic attitude. They are either

aristocrats or people posing as them.

So, aristocrats running the country and sitting in the Cabinet today?

The supporters of both Charles I and the second needed cavalier

writing, poetry, celebrating and pleasured lifestyle.

They needed confirmation that the old days were better.

But their real legacy consisted in not quite conforming to type. For

on closer inspection, they were both more and less than real

cavaliers. They offered a lasting suggestion of how, whether a

society cleevs into warring parties, people remain more complex than

Next up, an insightful biography of a brilliant strategist. Much has

been written about the political career of German's Iron Chancellor,

but in Bismarck: A Life, the American historian, Jonathan

Steinberg has chosen to focus on the infuriating contradictions in

his infuriating -- mercurial personality. Rory Stewart went to

discover more about the statesman who cast such a long shadow in

Bertie Ahern Germany. Perhaps no country in Europe -- in

Germany. Perhaps no country in Europe has had no such influence on

modern history as Germany. But 1 50 years ago there was no

such thing as the United States -- United state called Germany. The

creator of this modernified german state was perhaps the greatest

creator of all time, Otto Von Bismarck.

A politicians what strikes me about business mark is that he had one

big idea, he wanted to create a unified Germany, despite the

oppositions he got it done. Bismarck was seen by everybody as

the Iron Chancellor. But in Jonathan Steinberg's

fascinating book, something else emerges. A private, vulnerable man

behind the iron exterior. The real Bismarck was a complex

character. A Highbury condrak with a concity tuition of an ox. He

always wore a uniform in public after a certain stage of his career,

but one of the few never to certain in the king's regular army. His

fellow youngsters came to distrust him. Too clever, too unstable, too

unpredictable, not a proper chap, but all agreed he was brilliant.

So, who was Bismarck? How do you explain who was Bismarck today?

Born in 1815, dies in 1858, a man who unionifies Germany. A war

against the French in 1807, he creates the Geremi that is there

now, he puts the states stogt in a federation, that's the great

Bismarck. The scale of Bismarck's triumph

cannot be exaggerated. He told those who would listen what he

intended to do and how, and he did it. With perfect justice in August

1866 he pounded his fist on his desk and cried, "I have beaten them

all" He is larger than life and intellectually he is larger than

life. What all say is that once Bismarck gets into the stream, you

cannot describe him. He is bewitching. Of course, I'm a

historian, I am interested in the world, how we live in it, came to

be. Bismarck is one of those who transformed it.

This is what he wrote, "About 7.30, the prince invited zuebel and me to

his study. He offered us his bedroom to reLee ourselves. We went

in and found under the bed the two objects that we sought. As we

stationed ourselves at the wall, Zuebel spoke from the depth of his

heart, everything about the man is great, even his chit" In the

bobbing you referred to him as a demonic figure, what do you mean by

that? There was a power that contemporaries were aware of. They

used this word frequently, it was said that "il est el diablo", he is

the deily. This destructiveness, the power, of the capacity to

flatten people, did have something uncanny about him. Lots of

contemporaries called him that. So there is something in the

psychological make-up, the powerful urge, the means of dominating.

Did this have a re-election on his health? He was a hypochondriac. He

had all kinds of terrible symptoms, if the king said a bad word to him,

he would not come out of his room for a couple of days he was like a

baby. Because he designed a system of government in which only he

could make the decisions he had to decide on everything. The fact is

he did not have the power, everything he did required the king

to do it. That is part of the problem with business mash's career.

He was obsessed with dominating people, but he was a servant.

What did they see in him? We all now the picture, his image hung in

every school room in over many a hearth. He embody and manifested

the greatness of Germany. The image became itself a burden to

successors. He made it impossible that Germany could get along with

normal people. The new Kaiser comes, he wants to

be a different king, a king of the people. His and Bismarck clash.

Bismarck is dismissed. Something that could have happened at any

time in the previous 20 years. Kaiser who sacks him is of course

the Kaiser that leads Germany in the First World War? Yes.

Sir Edward Gray says that Germany was like a battleship without a

rudder. The reason is that the rudder was working only in the

hands of Bismarck. When it collapsed, who could do it? The

system could not work, that is the catastrophe. What would Bismarck

have made of the weird 21st century situation? The nomination of

celebrity prizes? He would like that, but if he didn't win he would

not have been pleased! Next on the shortlist is Matt Ridley, who has

turned his attention to free markets and produced a counterblast

to all of 9 economic and environmental doom mongers out

there. In The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, he argues

that negative forecasting is out of control.

He sets out to prove that mankind's unfailing ability to trade and

share ideas will continue to improve our lives. Scientist Adam

Rutherford went to find out why we should all be looking on the bright

When you look at the numbers, the naughties are the best time to be

alive. Our generation has enjoyed more peace, freedom, leisure time,

education, medicine and travel than any other in history.

Why are we so pessimistic? When there are such abundant reasons to

be hopeful. Throughout history wise men and women and many nutters have

predicted catastrophe, and apocalypse at the end of times. The

reasons for the pessimism has changed over the years, but the

doom mongering itself as remained unshakeable.

That's why I'm looking forward to meeting the refreshingly optimistic

Matt Ridley. So, did you start off as a

rationalist or as an oment mist? started as a rationalist with a bit

of a bias towards optimism. I noticed that the good news was not

getting out there. I am a gloomy pessimist like everyone else, but I

have managed to rationalise that the world is getting better.

Pessimism dominates the news, what is it about humans that makes you

feel optimistic? It is invasion. Constantly changing and constantly

bringing in new ideas to replace old ones and combine with new wins,

so the pessimists are right if we do nothing, we will be in trouble.

For example if we use up the oil, we will use it up, but because of

the way that we innovate, we will replace it. Substitute something

else for oil. That is what we have done for the last thousands of

years, innovated our way around any problem. That is what I think will

continue. Human beings have started to do

something to and with etch other -- each other that in effect build a

collective intelligence. They had started for the first time to

exchange things between unrelated and unmarried individuals. To share,

swap, barter and trade. So you argue that this notion of

trade is a unique human attribute, that is the thing that separated us

from all of our ancestors? Well, I'm bringing a very evolutionary

perspective to economics, I think that they are simple things. The

key ingredient is a bottom-up view the world. That is key to genetics

and natural selection, but it is key to understanding economics.

What happens about the time we take off, about the time we go from

being just another ape to a spectacular technological species

with enormous impact on the planet is we start to exchange. No other

animal does this, at least not between strangers. Once you start

doing that, what you are doing is bringing together different ideas

about how to do things, how to make things and allowing them to combine.

It has the sim impact on culture that the invention of sex had on

biological evolution. Ideas start to have sex.

Innovators are in the business of sharing. It's the most important

thing that they do, for unless they share their invasion, it can have

no benefit for them or for anybody else. The one activity that got

easier to do after 1800 and has gotten easier recently is sharing.

Travel and communication, disseminated information, faster

and further. Newspapers, technical journals, telegraphs have spread

ideas as fast as they spread gossip. So, is the central thesis in the

book that we have never had it so good? Yes it is certainly true we

have never had it so good, but it does not mean this is as good as it

gets. What we have today is a veil of tears compared to what we could

achieve. We are not hithing the diminishing returns that the

economists have been respecting for 200 years. It was thought we would

experience diminishing returns, that iron out the deficiencies and

there would be no improvements to gain, but there is accelerated

growth. There is more growth around the world. Why is that? Because the

ideas are not limited. It is not true that you run out of new ideas.

The more new ideas you have, the more chance there is of finding new

ones. If we are sharing ideas we are in a potentially infinite

improvement in our lives. History repeats itself as a spiral,

not a circle. With an everygrowing capacity for good and bad, played

out through unchanging individual character, so the human race will

continue to expand and enrich its culture, despite setbacks and

people having the same evolved unchanging nature. The 21 st

century will be a magnificent time to be alive. Dare to be an

optimist! Great research is the life blood of factual writing, but

new discoveries can be a challenge to accepted homeowner. That was the

case with our next book by the Dutch academic Frank Dikottor. In

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating

Catastrophe, the author trawled through recently released documents

from China's rural archives to reassess the true costs of Mao Tse-

tung's ill-conreceived Great Leap Forward. The author is a professor

at Hong Kong University, the BBC Beijing correspondent, Damian

Grammaticas, went to meet him to hear proof of Chairman Mao's role

China in the 19 50s was one of the poorest nations on earth e, but Mao

Tse-tung dreamt of transforming his country into an communist paradise.

He launched the Great Leap Forward, a policy looks to revolutionise

industry and putting China on the map.

His goals were catalogued in Frank Dikottor's Mao's Great Famine: The

History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. It is one of the most

detailed accounts on the subject ever published.

Can you explain a little by about Great Leap Forward that caused

this? What was Chairman Mao trying to achieve with this? Chairman Mao

sees the wealth of China in its people and in particular in the

hundreds of millions of people who live in the countryside.

And his attempt to catapult China's past its competitors consists in

forging that massive population in one giant army.

, "Everyone a soldier, Chairman Mao had proclaimed at the height of the

campaign, brushing aside a salary, a day off each week, or a

prescribed limit on the amount of labour that a worker should carry

out. A goient's people's army in the command economy would spont to

-- respond to every Beck and call of its generals. Ever aspect of

society organised along military lines in a continuous revolution"

What do you pinpoint as the cause of 9 famine? The food shortages

come about as many of the schemes simply don't work N this kind of

radical collectivisation, farmers themselves have no incentive to do

any work it is not just shortage of food, it is actually the

distribution of food that matters. Food is used as a weapon. If I am

in charge of the village and I think you are too old or too sick

to actually work, I will ban you from the canteen.

So what we tend to forget about this period is that people, it was

not just the people that starved to death, people were being starved to

death. , "Throughout the country a starved

logic governed relationships between the rulers and the ruled.

As there was not enough food to go around, the able workers were given

preferential treatment while those considered idle, the children, the

sick and the elderly were abused." China was exporting grain to Russia

in return for nuclear expertise while this was going on? China goes

on a shopping spree, importing massive amounts of equipment,

including entire factories from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe.

Then the bills come in. In November 1958, it was said by

someone, "I would rather not eat than not honour our commitments to

our foreign friends" By that he means he would rather export more

grain to pay for the bills than to lose face.

In your book you document an extraordinary level of violence

that went on throughout Chinese? The violence struck me right away

in the first week when I started working on the archives. There was

a story of a boy who was tied up and thrown into a pond as he had

stolen a handful of grain. There seemed to be a lot of those

stories., "Violence became the routine rule of control. It was not

used occasionally on the few to instil the fear on many, but it was

used systematically, against anyone who seemed to dawdle, obstruct the

process, let alone pilfer or steal by the majority of villagers"

all of this is happening, people in their desperation are turning on

each other, is that right? Families start collapsing. Fathers take away

the food ration of their daughters, just outside of Nan chin is the man

that takes the grain ration of his eight-year-old daughter and this

girl dies of hunger. There are many accounts of people forced to make

horrendousous choices. At the end of all of your research

and work and writing of this, who do you think was responsible for

this famine? There is one man who set this whole thing in motion, his

name is Mao Tse-tung. Having said that, Chairman Mao

would never have prevailed without the help, assistance and the

support of key players around him. So this is not just one man it is

also an entire system that is responsible for what happened.

The number of people you calculate who were killed is almost double

what others have said? On the basis of very detailed sats of statistics,

I reached the conclusion that at least 45 million people died

unnecessarily during that period. Is an unimaginable number of people.

I still can't get my head around that. I suppose if you wished the

sheer scope of death during that period and the American of death

which make Chairman Mao's great famine stand out as one of the

greatest man-made disasters in human history.

Our second biography this evening is a vivid portrait of a brilliant

but troubled artist, Caravaggio: The Sacred and the Profane, is by

the art critic and Culture Show presenter, Andrew Graham-Dixon. A

decade in the writing it preess -- pieces together the dark, dangerous

and dirty deeds of the life of arguably the greatest Italian

painter of the 17th century. It re- examiness the event of -- that

marks Caravaggio's fall from grace. Sarah Dunant is an author as

passionate about history as she is about art. She met Andrew Graham-

Dixon to discover the truth about Caravaggio was not always the art's

superstar that he is today. His renewed popularity has come from

his work, but also from the fascination of his life as the

brawling murdering bad boy of counterreformation Italy. In a

culture with an insatiable appetite for the private lives of the famous,

this combination of rep bait and genius has proved simply

irresistible. It has taken Andrew Graham-Dixon ten years to write

Caravaggio: The Sacred and the Profane, a biography which sets out

to present new evidence and new theories on the painter's life and

work. Caravaggio's life is like his art,

a series of lightening flashes in the darkest of nights. A man who

can never be known in full because almost all that he did, said,

thought and lost is in the uncoverable past. Much of what is

found here is found in the criminal archives of the time.

Apart from those of the painting, these are crimes and misdemeanours.

When Caravaggio emerges from the obscurity of his past, he says like

the characters in his own paintings, as a man in the extremist.

I suppose, Andrew, the first question is what took you so long?

You mean, just ten years? Yes? Mostly, waiting for new leads to

emerge, to play out. Very, very complicated archival research to be

done. So, did you start knowing that

there was more information to be discovered? I started by realising

that I was in an unusual position. You are talking about somebody who

is incredibly celebrated, loved as an artist. About him it is possible,

suddenly, to write a really new book as people obsessed with

Caravaggio have been digging and digging and digging and digging and

finding and finding, but have published their research in tiny

places. The main archival places have

studied this for 30 years. There was a tiny little book

printed in Latin. So there was a chance to show Caravaggio to the

world. So everybody knows that there is this violent episode in

his life? Caravaggio murdered a man. There are suggestions that there

had been ill feeling for a while, but the key evidence is, which has

emerged in recent years, is the fact that this was a dual. It was

not just a fight that broke out, this was a dual. They had had

enough, they had to settle it. So Caravaggio walks into his fate?

Shrib rately. Yes, absolutely deliberately.

-- deliberately. The dual does not last long. Real

duals are short and sharp. At the climax, Caravaggio ceezs his

initiative. He lungs the -- at the groin of his fallen opponent,

piercing his fem ral artery. Caravaggio takes out his sword and

then Thomas steps out of line to help his injured, bleeding brother.

He draws the sword and strikes the painter in the head. Caravaggio,

sturned by the injury can fight no more. Then the carnage stop zrb

stops and everyone disperses. As the friend carries on, they

unconsciousless reeenact, Caravaggio's alter piece in a

nearby street. A solemn depiction of men struggling under er the

weight of a heavy corpse. How far do you think that reading

him in his own paintings and the images that one cease of him in his

paintings tells you as much about the artist as it does the life?

most obvious case of a picture, were if you read the facts much the

life against the painting, that painting makes sense in a new way,

it would be the famous David and Goliath. Where Checko is holding up

the head of Goliath, who, here he is, Caravaggio, with this

terrifying face. The death's head of Goliath is this self-portrait.

He seems horrible, half dead, half alive, the right eye glazed over

and closing with the left eye outraged in pain. He is like one of

the damnetd souls in Dante's Inferno.

Caravaggio painted David and Goliath and the painting was his

darkly ingenious plea to the one man who could save him throughout

the trial. His way of saying that the judge was welcome to have his

head in the painting, if only he would let him keep it in real life.

What did you discover, what was it about the process that allowed you

to see a different Caravaggio? is somebody who has been turned

into a ludicrous set of myths, I hope. What he emerges from in my

book is actually a human being, a person, a complicated, strange

person, but somebody whose actions are explicable. Somebody who lived

in a world where particular codes of honour and violence were

prevalent. He was not just a lunatic. He was a real man. A real

person. Our final book may not be the first

historical cow of the American Revolution and its aftermath, but

it is the first to give a full voice to the losing side. In

Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the

British Empire, Harvard historian, Maya Jasanoff reworks the stories

of those who fled America in 1783 to rebuild their lives in British

colonies. Playwright and fellow American Bonnie Greer talks to the

author about the disordeal die as pra -- diaspora that shaped the

empire. Growing up in America you get the

story of the American Revolution that is all really one sided. This

is the story of the other side. This is the story of the people.

The people, who, as you and I were taught as children, who lost.

And you chose this subject. I'm very fascinated as to why.

The story of the American Revolution is such a central story

to who Americans think that they are, that it was important in a

sense to get a full picture of who we really are and bring out the

voices of the people who used to be written off as without history.

Is that for any particular reason? Or do they move you more or

interest you more? I think that I have always been drawn to history

through lives, but I am drawn to the lives that seem the more

obscure ones. It may abfunction of my own back ground in a sense as

somebody who comes from mixed traditions and who has traveled a

lot throughout my childhood and beyond. I'm really drawn to the

stories of people who seem to cross borders and fall between the cracks

and who are not neatly boxed into established categories. What if you

hadn't wanted the British to Lee? Mixed in amongst the happy New York

crowd were other less cheerful faces for the loyalists, the

colonist who sided with them in the war, the departure of the troops

sided worry, not tribulation. What sort of treatment could they expect

in the United States? Would they be jailed? Would they be attacked?

Would they be able to hold on to their jobs? Confronting real doubts

in the United States, 60,000 loyalists decided to follow the

British and take their chances elsewhere in the British Empire.

You talk about the evacuation of New York. When I read that section

it almost reminded me of the images that we saw in 9/11. It wasn't

exactly that way, but it was the feeling that New York was on the

run. The evacuation of New York city in 1783 was, I think, quite

possibly the largest single transfer of population out of the

United States. It is an amazing story, absolutely

amazing, but also the largest evacuation that the British managed,

we are talking about 30,000, 40,000 people. In order to get a sense of

the bustle of what was happening I looked at the newspapers, the pages

are crammed with little advertisements, advertisements for

people selling off their goods. They have to leave. Advertisements

telling people where the ships are sailing from. Announcements of

meetings of people gathering together, figuring out where to go

next. Letters written in from different parts of the empire to

say come here, go there. The sheer demographic shock of

Jamaica's society must have shocked even before they left the ship.

This carried almost 2,000 other blacks on ward into continued

slavery. Stepping off the convoy, the loyalists joined people of

colour and free blacks living in Jamaica. As they made their way on

to the streets of Kingston, they must have marvelled to find

themselves for the first time in his life in a city where black

faces outnumbered the white. What I came across in the research

of the book is the loyalist claims to compensate the loyalists for

what they lost. Thousands filed claims for this commission. They

were all submitted to the office. The British state is good at record

keeping, they are all in the National Archives, I went through

the stuff to reconstruct the sense of loss and agitation and need and

ambition, in a sense, from the dispossessed people to get as much

back as they possibly could. Withen these bundles lurked stories

of wartime devastation, adventure and personal trauma. It was here,

for instance, that Thomas Brown told of his torture, ha John lick

sten Stein explained he had been chased from his plantation and that

Molly Grant told of her flight to Niagra.

It showed a picture of Civil War. They give unusual insight into the

columnists material world, forming a sort of unsystem altic colonial

systems book. There were households, loss brass

coffee pots, slick saddles, favoured garnet ear rings.

Why do you think it is important today to have this book? This is a

time when many are insecure of the foundations of their nations of

their places in the world. These stories are about people living

through a moment when their entire foundation was Yanked away. Yet

they found a way forward, a way forward that in the United States

is the founding of the, you know, the great beacon of liberty to so

many through the ages. They found a way forward in the British Empire

that had its vision of liberty that is a profound and wilful thing when

seen at its best. Well, there we have it. Communists

and Caravaggio, loyalists and rational optimists and a statesman.

Six but only one winner. Time now to turn to the judge panel to find

out who is the winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-

Fiction. We now move to the tougher part of

the evening, when we have to choose a winner from these extraordinary

books. These are monumental works.

There is a book that changes our view of the past and also Australia

view of the present. Do you agree? I thought -- and also our view of

the present. I thought it was an extraordinary

read. In the details as they are unfolding, not just 46 million dead,

but a third of all houses raised, grotesque damage to the ecosystem

and chilling broughtallisation of the levels at the authoritarian

state. It is almost too much. to unpick the whole thing, the

whole thing is systematically, the reports, the statistics were wrong

from the ground up. At each level they were more distorted. So the

work of scholarship involved, taking the central figures, finding

out how they compare with the locals once, comparing this was a

very mathematical feat. And the evidence of how he got the

material. He obviously knows the Chinese.

All of these tiny little things, these pieces of information

suddenly becoming available. This is very impressive. The effect is

that this is all new information, newly researched, he has sources

for everything. A very moving narrative. This book is changing

history. It is certainly changing the West's view of China. Certainly

the view in this country was that the cultural revolution was the

real horror of the post 1949 China. We now know it was this Great Leap

Forward. We move from the dark ness of

Chairman Mao to Caravaggio, this extraordinary look at Caravaggio

and his work and himself in a different way, do you agree?

found Caravaggio illuminating. It is, you know, it is this

extraordinarily... Written with great panache and enthusiasm it

carries you along and puts you into Caravaggio's world but to me, what

is most important about it, why we are interested in Caravaggio is

that it takes the paintings and reads them so closely and not a bit

of dirt under a finger nail is missed. The weighing of Caravaggio

hanging in the gallery. The lovely bit in the beginning that says that

the paintings are so dark, there is this intense boxes that they blow

the other paintings off the wall. You cannot hang them next to

anything else, you don't see the other paintings.

And set beautifully in the historical context. I thought that

I could smell the sewers of Rome going through this extraordinary

life of his? It is a study of a life sacred and profane. Capturing

the counter reformation in all of that. Making you think about what

that Catholicism was all about. The demand in the Catholicism, that you

look fully on the flesh, the blood of the suffering and he brings that

and puts that into art. It is a wonderful book. Liberty's

Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire by

Maya Jasanoff is a past-breaking work. It opens up an area of

history that has been explored but never in this kind of characterful

depth. I found myself thinking that there are a dez books in here. It

is a very important work of -- there are a dozen books in here. It

is a very important piece of history, do you agree? Yes, I think

it is ground breaking. I really envy it, I really wish I had

written it myself. It has everything it has great

characters, it has narrative drive and amazing scholarship and a

fantastic new argument, it would change the way that the history of

the British Atlantic is thought about. Before I suppose in the main

stream, people thought of the American war of independence as

this sort of invasion of the nasty Red Coats, but in fact, the

loyalists were the cousins and the neighbours and the sons of the pait

rots. So it is a Civil War. So I have never read a book that

combines the vit and the bigger stories with the big historical

themes, and they are so original as well. I learned so much about the

first American Civil War and also about the British Empire and how

progressive it was in many ways. And how interrelated they were.

the loyalists in forcing the imperial centre to redefine the

relationship with the colonial subjects. There is this dark matter,

nobody has noticed it, but there is this extra matter e, and here it is.

The loyalists have missed out in the British history, they are not

interested in them and the American history, as they are this strange,

Tory losers! We move to the The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity

Evolves it is a wonderful profound robust and pungent argument, isn't

it, David? It is confidence, polemic and make as lot of people

cross, like it should. Matt Ridley has read so many books on our

behalf. It is a great expend youm about ideas, about the way in which

ideas have mated in the last 200 years and are doing so at an ever

higher rate. It is not an angry book, did you

find yourself uplifted by it? My highest compliment is that I

went through dog-earring pages, thinking I will steal that for a

column. That is a very high compliment!

Absolutely, he is just fizzing and buzzing with ideas, light lit worn

it is one of those extraordinary books of profound research and

understanding and seems to wear it without any great aplomb? It is a

brilliant wide-ranging essay. I did not agree with all of it, but I was

eelectrified with it. He also has no truck with the idea that life

was lovely in the past. That society was simpler, that people

were nicer, so there is no nostalgia, and as a historian I ray

gree. No woman should want to be born before the invention of sure

vievable Caesareans, so I am with you there! This is true.

From there we move to Bismarck, this great towering Hucking figure,

looming over the 19th century. What an extraordinary genius, what a

terrible monster. An extraordinary combination of paranoia, hype

concrack, wit and charm and he describes that century.

And what a good book. The notes are all there. The facts are all there

and yet the narrative sweeps you along. I was transfixed by that

book. So insightful about this extraordinary, charming monster. I

did not agree with all of the grand, historical, political lines that

Bismarck leads straight to Hitler, but that did not matter in a way.

He gives you such a profound figure of this extraordinary fellow.

Biographers often say that the subject is a man of contradictions,

but in this case it is justified, you have the civilian who wares a

union -- wears a uniform all the time. The man who is having

tantrums, weeping. To have a doctor to pat his hand to

sleep at night and then the monster with the guy normous chamber pots!

Also, in some ways slightly depressing as I think we all

nurture a fraint suspicion that politicians are slightly mad people

who -- fate suspicion who just want to boss us around and here is the

most successful politician in the 19th century and he is completely

mad and his reason for living is to order everybody else around.

And I love the relationship with Bismarck that the author has, you

feel him being attracted and repelled at the same time. 7 It is

that he is a monster, but our monster. I felt totally safe in his

hands. I agree, a great guide to a

monumental figure. Finally Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the

English Civil War, a subject so buried in our national character,

the notion of a cavalier, the flamboyant swashbuckler, on the

losing side, who is wrong, but romantic. The texture, the

knewanced portrait that John Stubbs gives us of a group of people who

were extraordinary talented in many ways. Very feckless, a lot of them.

They were not all rep row baits, but my God they got up to bad

behaviour, right down to burning their own noses off to cure

syphilis. An extraordinary group of men.

I was glad to have John Subtling in there. The purpose of the book is

to unpack the idea of the cavalier. It is much an idea as a group of

biography, but we do have one cavalier cavalier in the book. As

in the film, he had 100 young men in Scarlett britches riding into

town and they had to be handsome. All with their brushed hair and the

spectacle for everyone watching. But they are people of sew fist

case too. Thinking profoundly about what they are up to at the same

time with all of this theatre going And the mon kists committed to the

idea of fighting -- and the monarchists committed to the idea

of fighting, but at the service of this king who, really is rather

austere and not cavalier at all. Yes, they are all thinking can't we

warm him up a bit with a nice hat sm! Absolutely. I don't know in --

Warm him up a bit with a nice hat on him.

Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, we arrive at the crunch point. It

is so difficult to choose a win frer the truly wonderful books, but

the time has come. I want to thank my fellow judges who have been

models of patience, and percent veerns and patience throughout this

very gruelling but tremendously enjoyable process. Now has come the

time to announce the winner for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-

Fiction, the winner is Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most

Devastating Catastrophe by Frank Dikottor.

Congratulations! Absolutely brilliant! I'm going to hand frank

the very large cheque for �20,000 with many congratulations! Thank

you so much. I'm deeply humbled. You have brought me here tonight

and I'm in extraordinary company, thank you so much.

First of all can I thank the judges and those who organised the prize.

Can I thank also my literally agent who believed in the project from

the very beginning. Can I thank the entire Blooms by team, Michael in

particular. They were wonderful. Can I thank Joe who collaborated

with me in the project and spent a lot of time in remote regions

collecting the memories of those who managed to survive, many of

them are taking the memories of them to their grave.

You did a terrific job. And last, but not least, can I

thank my wife who has had to put up with me for a very long time. You

take Poll Pot and the Kmer Rhouge we no a lot about that. Take that

and multiply that by 20 and you get roughly nearly the horror of this

period and this book tried to reconstruct the stories of the

people who either died or who against all of the odds managed to

pull through and survive. There is no memorial, no museum, no

Recommend brans Day and not even a public debate to be mentioned about

the years of horror. I think it was said that the

executioner calls kills twice, the second time through silence. I very

much hope that the sam sam -- Samuel Johnson prize will tribute

to disturbing the silence and making a little bit of noise.

Frank Dikottor is the winner of the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for

Non-Fiction, he receive as cheque for �20,000. Well, we will leave

you tonight from a reading from his winning book, Mao's Great Famine:

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe. Good night.

Tween 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Tse-tung,

the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and through his

country and frenzy in an attempt to leap forward, to catch up with

Great Britain in less than 15 years, by unleashing China's greatest

asset a labour force, Chairman Mao thought he could catapult his

country past his competitors in the pursuit of a Utopian paradise,