Marsh Biography Award 2011 Shortlist Announced

This article was published on Wednesday 3 August 2011

From over 100 books, and 180 reviewers, we are able to reveal the six shortlisted books for this year's award.

• Caravaggio, a Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon, published by Allen Lane, 2010

• Frances Partridge by Anne Chisholm published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009

• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell, published by Chatto & Windus, 2010

• Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock, published by HarperPress, 2010

• Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan by D R Thorpe, published by Chatto & Windus, 2010

• William Golding: The Man who Wrote "Lord of the Flies" by John Carey, published by Faber & Faber, 2009

The shortlisted books are as follows:

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the ESU’s headquarters, Dartmouth House, on Tuesday 22 November.

The judges for this year’s award include Dr Alastair Niven OBE, Principal of Cumberland Lodge, and former Director of Literature at the British Council; and Rosemary Hill, who won the Marsh Biography Award in 2009 with God’s Architect.

This has been an outstanding year for the award, with over 100 books submitted on a broad range of subjects from Trotsky to Churchill, and Anne Boleyn to Frank Sinatra, and 180 readers from around the UK helping us to review the books for shortlisting.

The Marsh Biography Award is a biennial award, given for the best biography written by a British author and first published in the UK during the two preceding years.

Judges look for a work that is historically important, records significant human achievement and is representative of the highest standards of written English and serious research.