The announcement of the Samuel Johnson prize longlist earlier today reveals a nation troubled by god and war.
Richard Dawkins's attack on religion, The God Delusion, is in contention for Britain's richest non-fiction prize with Ian Buruma's account of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh's death at the hands of an Islamic extremist, Murder in Amsterdam, and a clutch of books that focus on struggles in the Middle East. No space was found on the list for either travel writing or popular science.