Samuel Johnson was recorded by Boswell as saying that a woman preaching is “like a dog on hind legs; it is not done well, but it is surprising that it is done at all”. But what of women writing?
This year’s Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction has two fearsome women on its judging panel, Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti and Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, and one of them has raised an interesting question about how men fit the criteria for such awards better than women.
Beard, the Diary pin-up, is currently steaming through a pile of books before the long-list announcement next week but paused for thought in a post for the award’s website. “It’s impossible not to reflect whether there are (with some obvious and notable exceptions) different male and female styles in non-fiction, and whether it is the male style that seems to tick more of the ‘prize-winner boxes’,” she says.
This is the 15th year of the prize. In its history there have been 10 winners written by men, including Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad and James Shapiro’s Shakespeare biography, 1599. Among the four women victors have been Barbara Demick writing on contemporary North Korea and Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, historian Peter Hennessy and reviewer James McConnachie complete the five judges, and Beard’s message has been noted. “Before anyone gets worried, all us judges are on the lookout for this — and we have tried to be gender-aware,” adds Beard.
