What exactly is a travel book? If you assume it's simply a matter of a writer travelling and recording the bizarre and beautiful things that they encounter along the way, think again. This point was starkly posed yesterday when the Dolman Travel Book of the Year award was given to Ian Thomson for his investigation of Jamaica, The Dead Yard.

It's true that Thomson did go to the island, and travelled widely around it, but his book would as easily fit in the history or reportage sections of your local bookshop. In his introduction he formulates the point of his project around a cutting remark from a sceptical member of the Jamaican Historical Society. "Do we really need another book on Jamaica. You visitors are always getting it wrong. Either it's golden beaches or it's guns, guns, guns."

Thomson's journey to find the reality that lies between these two extremes draws him back, again and again, into the island's terrible colonial history. "Slavery runs through island life like the black line in a lobster," he writes. In doing so, his book is not just a portrait of a distant place, but also a journey towards "the understanding of a major element in contemporary British culture", the chairman of the judges, Michael Jacobs, said. Or, in Karl Marx's words, quoted by Thomson: "Jamaican history is characteristic of the beastliness of the true Englishman."

The Dolman is the only prize dedicated to travel literature in the UK, since Thomas Cook gave up on its long-running award in 2004, so it carries some weight in shaping the landscape of travel writing. The judges considered 70 books before deciding on their winner. Do you think they got it right?

In tomorrow's books podcast we'll be discussing what makes a good travel book, so we'd like to have your nominations for the prize, and also your suggestions of your favourite travel books of all time.