Dutch murder account up for prize

Van Gogh was murdered in November 2004

A book about the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh is among the six shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

The nominations also include an account of life inside war-torn Baghdad and a biography of adventurer Gertrude Bell.

Chair of the judges, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, said the books help "to bring an understanding of our world at a crucial time in history".

The winner, announced on 18 June, will receive £30,000 in prize money.

SAMUEL JOHNSON SHORTLIST Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties by Peter Hennessey Daughter of the Desert by Georgina Howell Brainwash by Dominic Streatfeild The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone is a report of the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

It contrasts the good life experienced by US officials inside Baghdad's Green Zone - the heavily fortified area where officials and the Iraqi government are based - and the horrors experienced by ordinary Iraqis.

One critic described it as a tale of "tragi-comic ineptitude and awesome corruption by US officials and contractors in Iraq".

Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma recounts the 2004 killing of Theo van Gogh in, who was shot and stabbed in the street by Mohammed Bouyeri.

Bouyeri had objected to a Van Gogh film about the abuse of women in Islamic societies.

Claire Tomalin's acclaimed Thomas Hardy biography, Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, and Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton, both failed to make the shortlist having been included on the longlist.

Whitbread biography winner Brian Thompson also missed out with his book Clever Girl, A Sentimental Journey.