British authors dominate Cundill Prize longlist

Andrew Wulf, winner of the Royal Society Book Prize, is one of four British authors to have made the six-strong longlist for the 2016 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature.

Based in Canada, the prize boasts the world’s "most lucrative" international award for a non-fiction book, with the winner receiving $75,000 (almost £58,000). Two "Recognition of Excellence" prizes of $10,000 apiece are also given.

Wulf is longlisted again for her biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature (John Murray). She is joined on the list by fellow British authors: professor of Classics at Cambridge University, Mary Beard, for SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Profile Books), also named Blackwell's Book of the Year in July; David Wootton, professor of history at the University of York, who is longlisted for The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (Allen Lane); and Franco-British lawyer Philippe Sands, a professor of law at University College London, who has also been longlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction (formerly the Samuel Johnson prize) for East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

The remaining authors on the longlist of six hail from the US and are both published by Princeton University Press: economist Robert J Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War and historian Thomas W Laqueur's The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains.

This year’s longlist was chosen by a panel comprising Timothy Brook, Republic of China chair at the University of British Columbia; John Darwin, professor of global and imperial history and director for Oxford Centre for Global History at the University of Oxford; David Frum, senior editor for The Atlantic; and Anna Porter, co-founder of Key Porter Books.

The three finalists will be announced the week of 3rd October, with the ultimate winner revealed at a gala awards ceremony in Toronto on 17th November at the Shangri-La Hotel.