Our non-fiction writing is currently eclipsing anything being done in the novel in this country

Andrew Marr

The prize is open to all authors of non-fiction books in the UK, irrespective of nationality, spanning biography to travel writing, popular science, the arts and current affairs.

Richard Fortey's Trilobite! Eyewitness To Revolution, which looks at the pre-historic crustacean which has survived for 300 million years, is one of the more intriguing books on the list.

Judges

Also shortlisted are a biography of Catherine The Great's lover Potemkin, Catherine Merridale's book, Night Of Stone: Death And Memory In Russia, and a book on The Third Reich.

The judges, chaired by the BBC's political editor Andrew Marr, include historian Niall Ferguson and managing director of the British Museum Suzanna Taverne.

The full shortlist is:-