All the Best Stories Are True

On the eve of the announcement of the winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, this year’s shortlisted authors gather at the RSA.

The Samuel Johnson Prize is the UK’s most prestigious award for non-fiction writing, and this year’s shortlist combines biography, memoir and history, with subjects as diverse as hawks, family history and dying. It includes a biography of politician Roy Jenkins, a widow's searing and humane account of her husband's loss of speech and death, the story of a slave rebellion, an exploration of family through generations of obscurity and poverty, a woman’s story of training a goshawk, and the story of Jewish children hidden in Vichy France.

Speakers: John Campbell, author of Roy Jenkins; Marion Coutts, author of The Iceberg: A Memoir; Alison Light, author of Common People; Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk; Caroline Moorehead, author of Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France

Chair: Tom Sutcliffe, journalist and broadcaster