The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its motto "All the best stories are true", the prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English. The longlist, shortlist and winner is chosen by a panel of independent judges, which changes every year. Formerly named after English author and lexicographer
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
, the award was renamed in 2015 after Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm and the primary sponsor. Since 2016, the annual dinner and awards ceremony has been sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
The prize is governed by the Board of Directors of The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction Limited, a not-for-profit company. Since 2018, the Chair of the Board has been Sir Peter Bazalgette, who succeeded Stuart Proffitt, the chair since 1999. In 2015, Toby Mundy was appointed as the Prize's first director.
History
Prior to the establishment of the Samuel Johnson Prize, Britain's premier literary award for non-fiction was the NCR Book Award which had been established in 1987. In 1997, the NCR Award experienced a scandal when it was revealed the judges, many of them chosen for their popularity rather than literary qualities, had used "ghost readers" and were not expected to read the books they voted on. Because of this and other problems the award ceased operations. In response, one of the previous winners of NCR Award, the historian
Peter Hennessy
Peter John Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, (born 28 March 1947) is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary Univ ...
, approached Stuart Proffitt, a Publishing Director at Penguin Press, with the idea for a new award. An anonymous benefactor was found who funded the establishment of the Prize, which was named after the English 18th-century author and lexicographer
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
.
From its inception through 2001, the prize was independently financed by the founding benefactor. In 2002, it was taken over by the BBC and re-named the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize and managed by
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002
. In 2009, the name was amended to the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and managed by
BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...
. The new name reflected the BBC's commitment to broadcasting coverage of the Prize on the BBC2 programme, '' The Culture Show''. In 2016, the name was changed to the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, after its new primary sponsor, the Edinburgh-based investment management company Baillie Gifford.
Prior to the 2009 name change, the winner received , and each finalist received . After 2009, the award was for the winner, and each finalist received . In February 2012, the steering committee for the prize announced that a new sponsor had been found for the prize, an anonymous philanthropist, enabling the prize money to be raised to . In 2015, funding for the prize was arranged by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, while the organisers sought new primary sponsors from 2016 onwards.
In 2016, under new sponsors Baillie Gifford, the prize money was restored to for the winner.
In 2019, following the announcement that Baillie Gifford will sponsor the award until at least 2026, the prize money was increased to £50,000.
It is widely recognised as the UK's most prestigious award for non-fiction authors.
Winners and shortlists
A blue ribbon () denotes the winner.
2020s
2022
The longlist of 12 titles was announced on 22 September 2022, having been postponed from 12 September because of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
The shortlist was announced on 10 October:
*
Caroline Elkins
Caroline Elkins (American, born Caroline Fox, 1969) is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School ...
, ''Legacy of Violence'': ''A History of the British Empire'' (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
*
Jonathan Freedland
Jonathan Saul Freedland (born 25 February 1967) is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for ''The Guardian''. He presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series ''The Long View''. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the ...
, ''The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World'' (John Murray Press, Hachette)
* Sally Hayden, ''My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route'' (4th Estate, HarperCollins)
* Anna Keay, ''The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown'' (William Collins, Harper Collins)
* Polly Morland, ''A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story'' (Picador, Pan Macmillan)
* Katherine Rundell, ''Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne'' (Faber & Faber)
The winner was announced on 17 November. The judges were Caroline Sanderson (chair), Laura Spinney,
Rachel Cooke
Rachel Cooke (born 1969) is a British journalist and writer.
Early life
Cooke was born in Sheffield, and is the daughter of a university lecturer.
She went to school in Jaffa, Israel, until she was 11, before returning to Sheffield, and atten ...
Samanth Subramanian Samanth Subramanian is an Indian writer and journalist based in London. He studied journalism at Penn State University and international relations at Columbia University. In 2018–19, he was a Leon Levy Fellow at the City University of New York. H ...
Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe (born 1976) is an American writer and investigative journalist. He is the author of five books—''Chatter,'' ''The Snakehead,'' '' Say Nothing,'' ''Empire of Pain,'' and ''Rogues''—and has written extensively for many publ ...
, '' Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty''
* Cal Flyn, ''Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape''
* Harald Jähner, ''Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955 ''
* Kei Miller, ''Things I Have Withheld''
* John Preston, ''Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell ''
* Lea Ypi, ''Free: Coming of Age at the End of History ''
The shortlist of six titles was announced on 15 October 2021. The judging panel consisted of Andrew Holgate, Sara Collins, Helen Czerski, Kathryn Hughes, Johny Pitts and Dominic Sandbrook
Matthew Cobb
Matthew Cobb (born 4 February 1957) is a British zoologist and professor of zoology at the University of Manchester. He is known for his popular science books ''The Egg & Sperm Race: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unravelled the Secrets o ...
, ''The Idea of the Brain: A History'' (Profile Books)
*
Sudhir Hazareesingh
Sudhir Hazareesingh (18 October 1961) is a British-Mauritian historian. He has been a fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford since 1990. Most of his work relates to modern political history from 1850; including the history ...
, ''Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture'' (Penguin Random House, Allen Lane)
*
Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb OBE (born 15 May 1965) is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent of ''The Sunday Times''.
Lamb has won sixteen major awards including four British Press Awards and the European Prix Bayeux-Calvad ...
, ''Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women'' (Harper Collins, William Collins)
* Amy Stanley, ''Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Woman's Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan'' (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
* Kate Summerscale, '' The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story'' (Bloomsbury Publishing, Bloomsbury Circus)
The shortlist of six titles was announced on 15 October 2020. The judging panel consisted of Martha Kearney (BBC Radio presenter), Shahidha Bari (writer and radio presenter), Simon Ings (writer and editor), Leo Robson (writer), Max Strasser (editor) and Bee Wilson (journalist and writer).
2010s
2019
*
Casey Cep
Casey Cep is an American author and journalist. Cep is a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'', and her work has appeared in ''The New York Times'', The Paris Review, ''The New Republic'', and other publications. Cep's debut non-fiction book, publis ...
, ''Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee''
* Laura Cumming, ''On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons''
*
William Feaver
William Feaver (born 1 December 1942) is a British art critic, curator, artist and lecturer. From 1975–1998 he was the chief art critic of the Observer, and from 1994 a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. His book ''The Pitmen P ...
, ''The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth''
*
Julia Lovell
Julia Lovell (born 1975) is a British scholar and prize-winning author and translator focusing on China.
Life and career
Lovell is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has bee ...
, ''Maoism: A Global History''
*
Azadeh Moaveni
Azadeh Moaveni (Persian: آزاده معاونى, born 1976) is an Iranian-American writer, journalist, and academic. She directs the Gender and Conflict Program at the International Crisis Group, and lectures on journalism at New York Univers ...
Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to '' The Times'' but became a separate publication ...
Myriam François
Dr Myriam Francois is an award-winning Franco-Irish journalist, filmmaker and writer. Her work has appeared on BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, and numerous other outlets and publications. Myriam is the founder and CEO of production companmpwr product ...
Hannah Fry
Hannah Fry (born February 1984) is a British mathematician, author, and radio and television presenter. She is Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. She studies the patterns of human behaviour, ...
, ''Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine''
*
Ben Macintyre
Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre (born 25 December 1963) is a British author, reviewer and columnist for ''The Times'' newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.
Early life
Macintyre is the elder son of Ang ...
, ''The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War''
*
Thomas Page McBee
Thomas Page McBee (born 1981) is an American transgender journalist and amateur boxer. He was the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden, which he discusses in ''Amateur''. His first book, '' Man Alive'', won a Lambda Literary Awar ...
, ''
Amateur
An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, self-taught, user-generated, DIY, and hobbyist.
History
...
: A True Story About What Makes a Man''
*
Stephen Platt
Stephen R. Platt is an American historian and writer. He is currently a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Early life and education
Platt holds a PhD in Chinese history from Yale University (2004). His area ...
, ''Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age''
* Serhii Plokhii, ''Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy''
*
Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as ''The ...
, ''She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity''
The longlist was not publicly announced. The shortlist was announced on 2 October 2018. The 2018 judging panel was chaired by ''The Economist's'' culture correspondent, Fiammetta Rocco, with
Stephen Bush
Stephen Kupakwesu Bush (born 21 March 1990) is a British journalist. He is columnist and associate editor at the ''Financial Times'' and has also written for ''The Guardian'', ''The Telegraph,'' '' i'' and ''New Statesman''.
Early life and educ ...
, journalist and political commentator;
Susan Brigden
Susan Elizabeth Brigden, FRHistS, FBA (born 26 June 1951) is a historian and academic specialising in the English Renaissance and Reformation. She was Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College, b ...
Nigel Warburton
Nigel Warburton (; born 1962) is a British philosopher. He is best known as a populariser of philosophy, having written a number of books in the genre, but he has also written academic works in aesthetics and applied ethics.
Education
Warburton r ...
, philosopher.
2017
*
David France
David Harry France, (born 30 June 1948) is an author, football historian and philanthropist. Throughout the past two decades, he has been the driving force behind numerous initiatives related to Everton Football Club including Gwladys Street's ...
, ''How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS''
* Christopher de Bellaigue, ''The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason''
*
Kapka Kassabova
Kapka Kassabova (born in November 1973, in Bulgarian Капка Касабова) is a poet and writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her mother tongue is Bulgarian, but she writes in English.
Life
Kapka Kassabova was born and grew up in S ...
, ''Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe''
*
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960), is an American author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator. Best known for his internationally best-selling and award-winning Holocaust family memoir The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, he is current ...
Simon Schama
Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
He fi ...
, ''Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492-1900''
The longlist was announced on 8 September and the shortlist was announced on 6 October. The 2017 judging panel was chaired by chaired by author and Chairman of ITV Sir Peter Bazalgette, together with Anjana Ahuja, science writer;
Ian Bostridge
Ian Charles Bostridge CBE (born 25 December 1964) is an English tenor, well known for his performances as an opera and lieder singer.
Early life and education
Bostridge was born in London, the son of Leslie Bostridge and Lillian (née Clark). ...
, tenor and writer; Professor
Sarah Churchwell
Sarah Bartlett Churchwell (born May 27, 1970) is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century American literature ...
, academic and writer and
Razia Iqbal
Razia Iqbal (born 1962) is a journalist employed by BBC News. She is a special correspondent, reporting for outlets across the BBC. From 2011 Iqbal has also presented '' Newshour'' on the BBC World Service. She has also presented ''Talking Bo ...
, journalist and broadcaster.
2016
:'
*
Philippe Sands
Philippe Joseph Sands, KC (born 17 October 1960) is a British and French writer and lawyer a11 King's Bench Walkand Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in ...
Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (born 31 May 1948) is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suf ...
, ''Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets''
*
Margo Jefferson
Margo Lillian Jefferson (born October 17, 1947) is an American writer and academic.
Biography
Jefferson received her B.A. from Brandeis University, where she graduated ''cum laude'', and her M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of ...
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar ( ar, هشام مطر) (born 1970) is an American born British-Libyan writer. His memoir of the search for his father, '' The Return'', won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Bo ...
, '' The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between''
The longlist was announced on 21 September and the shortlist was announced on 17 October. The 2016 judging panel was chaired by former BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders, together with
Philip Ball
Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal ''Nature'' for which he continues to write regularly. He now writes a regular column in ''Chemistry World''. He has contributed to ...
, science writer and author; Jonathan Derbyshire, executive comment editor of the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
''; Dr Sophie Ratcliffe, scholar, writer and literary critic and Rohan Silva, co-founder of the social enterprise, Second Home.
2015
*
Steve Silberman
Steve Silberman is an American writer for ''Wired'' magazine and has been an editor and contributor there for 14 years. In 2010, Silberman was awarded the AAAS "Kavli Science Journalism Award for Magazine Writing." His featured article "The Pla ...
, ''Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently''
*
Jonathan Bate
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL (born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, poet, playwright, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Prof ...
, ''Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life''
* Robert Macfarlane, ''Landmarks''
* Laurence Scott, ''The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World''
* Emma Sky, ''The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq''
*
Samanth Subramanian Samanth Subramanian is an Indian writer and journalist based in London. He studied journalism at Penn State University and international relations at Columbia University. In 2018–19, he was a Leon Levy Fellow at the City University of New York. H ...
, ''This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan Civil War''
The longlist for the 2015 prize was announced on 22 September and the shortlist was announced on 11 October. The 2015 judging panel was chaired by Pulitzer prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, together with Editor of '' Intelligent Life'' Emma Duncan, Editor of ''
New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publish ...
'' Sumit Paul-Choudhury, Director of China Centre at Oxford University Professor Rana Mitter and former Controller of Film and Drama and Head of Film 4Tessa Ross.
H is for Hawk
''H is for Hawk'' is a 2014 memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book of the Year award, among other honours.
Content
''H is for Hawk'' tells Macdonald's story of the year she spent training a no ...
Greg Grandin
Greg Grandin (born 1962) is a professor of history at Yale University. He previously taught at New York University. He is author of a number of books, including ''Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City'', which wa ...
, ''The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World''
* Alison Light, ''Common People: The History of an English Family''
*
Caroline Moorehead
Caroline Mary Moorehead (born 28 October 1944) is a human rights journalist and biographer.
Early life
Born in London, Moorehead is the daughter of Australian war correspondent Alan Moorehead and his English wife Lucy Milner. She received a B ...
, '' Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France''
The longlist was announced on 1 September 2014. The shortlist was announced on 8 October 2014. The 2014 judging panel was chaired by author and historian Claire Tomalin, accompanied by Alan Johnson MP, Financial Times Books Editor Lorien Kite, philosopher Ray Monk and historian Ruth Scurr.
2013
*
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Lucy Angela Hughes-Hallett (born 7 December 1951) is a British cultural historian, biographer and novelist. In November 2013, she won the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction for her biography of the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, ''The Pik ...
Charlotte Higgins
Charlotte Higgins, (born 6 September 1972) is a British writer and journalist.
Early life and education
Higgins was born in Stoke-on-Trent, the daughter of a doctor and a nurse, and received her secondary education at a local independent scho ...
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' reported that this year, judges showed a preference for history and biography, at the expense of works in science. On 30 September, judges announced the shortlist. The 2013 judging panel was chaired by the cosmologist and Astronomer Royal,
Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...
, accompanied by classical historian Mary Beard, director of Liberty
Shami Chakrabarti
Sharmishta "Shami" Chakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, (born 16 June 1969) is a British politician, barrister, and human rights activist. A member of the Labour Party, she served as the director of Liberty, a major advocacy group which promote ...
, historian
Peter Hennessy
Peter John Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, (born 28 March 1947) is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary Univ ...
Katherine Boo
Katherine "Kate" J. Boo (born August 12, 1964) is an American investigative journalist who has documented the lives of people in poverty. She has won the MacArthur "genius" award (2002) and the National Book Award for Nonfiction (2012), and her wo ...
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
...
Sue Prideaux
Sue Prideaux is an Anglo-Norwegian writer. Her grandmother was muse to the explorer Roald Amundsen and her godmother was painted by Edvard Munch, whose biography she later wrote under the title ''Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream''.
Awards and dis ...
, '' Strindberg: A Life''
The longlist was announced 17 September 2012, the shortlist was announced 5 October. The winner was announced 12 November. The monetary prize for 2012 was £20,000 for the winner. The judges were David Willetts, Patrick French, Paul Laity, Bronwen Maddox, Raymond Tallis.
Andrew Graham-Dixon
Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon (born 26 December 1960) is a British art historian and broadcaster.
Life and career
Early life and education
Andrew Graham-Dixon is a son of the barrister Anthony Philip Graham-Dixon (1929–2012), Q.C., and ...
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of h ...
)
*
Maya Jasanoff
Maya R. Jasanoff is an American academic. She serves as Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, where she focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire.
Early life
Jasanoff grew up in Ithaca, New York and comes from a ...
Jonathan Steinberg
Jonathan Steinberg (8 March 1934 – 4 March 2021) was the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of European History Emeritus and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Steinberg received his undergraduate degree ...
Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of ...
)
*
John Stubbs
John Stubbs (or Stubbe) (c. 1544 – after 25 September 1589) was an English pamphleteer, political commentator and sketch artist during the Elizabethan era.
He was born in the County of Norfolk, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge ...
, '' Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War''
The longlist was announced April 2011. The shortlist was announced 14 June 2011. The judges were David Goodhart, Sam Leith, Ben Macintyre, Brenda Maddox, Amanda Vickery.
Luke Jennings
Luke Jennings (born 1953) is a British author, dance critic and journalist.
Jennings trained as a dancer at the Rambert School, was one of the students of the Expressionist and Integrated dance pedagoge Hilde Holger, studied Indian languages, an ...
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Andrew Ross Sorkin (born February 19, 1977) is an American journalist and author. He is a financial columnist for ''The New York Times'' and a co-anchor of CNBC's ''Squawk Box.'' He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news s ...
Richard Wrangham
Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking.
...
, '' Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human''
The longlist was announced 22 April 2010. The shortlist was announced 26 May. The judges were Evan Davis, Jan Dalley, Daniel Finkelstein, Roger Highfield, Stella Tillyard.
2000s
2009
:'
*
Philip Hoare
Philip Hoare (born Patrick Kevin Philip Moore, 1958) is an English writer, especially of history and biography. He instigated the Moby Dick Big Read project. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and Leverhulme a ...
, ''Leviathan or, The Whale''
*
Liaquat Ahamed
Liaquat Ahamed (born 14 November 1952 in Kenya) is an American author.
Life and work
Liaquat Ahamed was born in Kenya, where his grandfather had emigrated to from Gujarat by way of Zanzibar in the late 19th century.Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World''
*
Ben Goldacre
Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford ...
King's Place
Kings Place is a building in London’s Kings Cross area, providing music and visual arts venues combined with seven floors of office space. It has housed the editorial offices of ''The Guardian'' newspaper since December 2008 and is the for ...
, London on 30 June. The monetary prize for 2009 was £20,000 for the winner, and each finalist receives £1000. The judges were Mark Lythgoe, Tim Marlow, Munira Mirza, Sarah Sands, Jacob Weisberg.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
Mark Cocker
Mark Cocker (born 1959) is a British author and naturalist. He lives with his wife, Mary Muir, and two daughters in Claxton, Norfolk; the countryside around Claxton is a theme for two of his twelve books.
Cocker has written extensively for ...
, ''Crow Country''
*
Orlando Figes
Orlando Guy Figes () is a British historian and writer. Until his retirement, he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as '' A People's Tragedy'' (1996), ''Nata ...
, ''The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia''
*
Patrick French
Patrick French (born 1966) is a British writer, historian and academician. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature, and received a PhD in South Asian Studies. He was appointed as the inau ...
, ''The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of VS Naipaul''
*
Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wit ...
, ''The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century''
The longlist was announced on 16 April 2008, the shortlist on 15 May 2008, and the winner on 15 July 2008. The judges were Claire Armitstead, Daljit Nagra, Chris Rapley, Hannah Rothschild, Rosie Boycott.
2007
*
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an American journalist. He is a senior correspondent and associate editor at ''The Washington Post'', where he has worked since 1994.
Life
He grew up mostly in the San Francisco Bay area. He attended Stanford University, w ...
Peter Hennessy
Peter John Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, (born 28 March 1947) is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary Univ ...
, ''Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties''
*
Georgina Howell
Georgina Howell (8 May 1942 – 21 January 2016) was a British journalist and author who began in fashion journalism, but broadened her subject range as her career progressed.
Early life
Howell was born in Kimberley, South Africa on 8 May 1942 ...
, ''Daughter of the Desert: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell'' (about
Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highl ...
Adrian Tinniswood
Adrian John Tinniswood FSA (born 11 October 1954) is an English writer and historian.
Tinniswood studied English and Philosophy at Southampton University and was awarded an MPhil at Leicester University. He was a regional chair of the Heritage ...
, ''The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England''
The longlist and shortlist were announced in late 2007. The judges were Helena Kennedy, Diana Athill, Jim Al-Khalili, Tristram Hunt, Mark Lawson.
2006
*
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shake ...
, ''1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare''
*
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his distinguished entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two ...
, ''Untold Stories''
*
Jerry Brotton
Jerry Brotton is a British historian. He is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, a television and radio presenter and a curator.
Brotton writes about literature, history, material culture, trade, and east-west rel ...
, ''The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection''
* Carmen Callil, ''Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family & Fatherland''
*
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt ( ; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was a British-American historian, essayist and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European ...
, '' Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945''
* Tom Reiss, ''The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught between East and West''
The longlist was announced 27 March 2006 and shortlist was announced 24 May 2006. The judges were Robert Winston, Sir Richard Eyre, Pankaj Mishra, Cristina Odone, Michael Prodger.
2005
*
Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe (; born 19 August 1961) is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, '' What a ...
, ''Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson''
*
Alexander Masters
Alexander Wright Masters is an English author, screenwriter, and worker with the homeless. He lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Masters is the son of authors Dexter Masters and Joan Brady. He was educated at Bedales School, and took a first ...
Suketu Mehta
Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of ''Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found'', which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Pri ...
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over thirteen million books in sixty-three lan ...
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prim ...
)
* Sarah Wise, ''The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830s London''
The longlist was announced 20 April 2005 and shortlist was announced 12 May 2005. The judges were Marcus du Sautoy, Andrew Holgate, Maria Misra, John Simpson, Sue MacGregor.
Jonathan Bate
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL (born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, poet, playwright, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Prof ...
, ''John Clare: A Biography''
*
Bill Bryson
William McGuire Bryson (; born 8 December 1951) is an American–British journalist and author. Bryson has written a number of nonfiction books on topics including travel, the English language, and science. Born in the United States, he has b ...
Orlando Figes
Orlando Guy Figes () is a British historian and writer. Until his retirement, he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as '' A People's Tragedy'' (1996), ''Nata ...
Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin (née Delavenay; born 20 June 1933) is an English journalist and biographer, known for her biographies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Early life
Tomalin was born Claire Dela ...
, ''Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self'' (about
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
Lord Nelson
Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805) was a British flag officer in the Royal Navy. His inspirational leadership, grasp of strategy, and unconventional tactics brought a ...
)
The longlist was announced 1 April 2003 and the shortlist on 2 May 2003. The judges were Michael Portillo, Tim Radford, Andrew Roberts, Fiammetta Rocco, Rosie Boycott.
Eamon Duffy
Eamon Duffy (born 1947) is an Irish historian. He is a professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and former president of Magdalene College.
Early life
Duffy was born on 9 February 1947, in Dundalk, I ...
, ''The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village''
* William Fiennes, ''The Snow Geese''
*
Richard Hamblyn
Richard Hamblyn (born 1965) is a British environmental writer and historian. He is a lecturer in the Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and has contributed articles and reviews to the ''Sunday T ...
, ''The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies''
*
Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981. At various times a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lab ...
, ''Churchill: a Biography'' (about
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
)
* Brendan Simms, ''Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia''
The longlist was announced 21 May 2002 and the shortlist was announced 6 June 2002. The judges were Richard Fortey, Caroline Gascoigne, Bonnie Greer, Robert Harris, David Dimbleby.
2001
*
Michael Burleigh
Michael Burleigh (born 3 April 1955) is an English author and historian whose primary focus is on Nazi Germany and related subjects. He has also been active in bringing history to television.
Early life
Michael Burleigh was born on 3 April 1955. ...
, ''The Third Reich: A New History''
*
Richard Fortey
Richard Alan Fortey FRS FRSL (born 15 February 1946 in London) is a British palaeontologist, natural historian, writer and television presenter, who served as president of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007.
Ea ...
, ''Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution''
* Catherine Merridale, ''Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia''
* Graham Robb, ''Rimbaud'' (about
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...
)
*
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore (; born 27 June 1965) is a British historian, television presenter and author of popular history books and novels,
including ''Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar' (2003), Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and ...
, ''Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin'' (about
Grigory Potemkin
Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski (, also , ;, rus, Князь Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Потёмкин-Таври́ческий, Knjaz' Grigórij Aleksándrovich Potjómkin-Tavrícheskij, ɡrʲɪˈɡ ...
)
*
Robert Skidelsky
Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, (born 25 April 1939) is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Skidelsky read history at Jesus ...
, ''John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937–1946'' (about
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...
)
The shortlist was announced 23 May 2001. The judges were Niall Ferguson, Steve Jones, Annalena McAfee, Suzanna Taverne, Andrew Marr.
Tony Hawks
Antony Gordon Hawksworth, MBE (born February 27, 1960), known professionally as Tony Hawks, is a British comedian and author.
Early life
Born in Brighton, Sussex, Hawks was educated at Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School and Bright ...
, ''Playing the Moldovans at Tennis''
*
Brenda Maddox
Brenda, Lady Maddox ( Murphy; February 24, 1932 – June 16, 2019) was an American writer and biographer, who spent most of her adult life living and working in the UK, from 1959 until her death. She is best known for her biographies, includin ...
, ''Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats'' (about
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
William Shawcross
William Hartley Hume Shawcross (born 28 May 1946, in Sussex, England) is a British writer and commentator, and a former Chairman of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
Education
Shawcross was educated at St Aubyns Preparatory School ...
, ''Deliver us from Evil: Warlords, Peacekeepers and a World of Endless Conflict''
* Francis Wheen, ''Karl Marx'' (about
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
)
The shortlist. The judges were Stephen Fry, Timothy Garton Ash, Susan Greenfield, Baroness Helena Kennedy, Nigella Lawson.
1990s
1999
*
Antony Beevor
Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works on the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War.
Early life
Born in Kensington, Beevor was educated at tw ...
Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw (born 29 April 1943) is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is pa ...
, ''Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris'' (about
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
)
* Ann Wroe, ''Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man'' (about
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate (; grc-gre, Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, ) was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 AD. He is best known for being the official who presided over the trial of ...
)
* John Diamond, ''C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too''
* Richard Holmes, ''Coleridge: Darker Reflections'' (about
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lak ...
British literature
British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature is inc ...
*
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
*
List of years in literature
This article gives a chronological list of years in literature (descending order), with notable publications listed with their respective years and a small selection of notable events. The time covered in individual years covers Renaissance, Baroq ...
*
List of literary awards
This list of literary awards from around the world is an index to articles about notable literary awards.
International awards
All nationalities & multiple languages eligible (in chronological order)
* Nobel Prize in Literature – since 1901 ...
*
Prizes named after people
A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people (such as sporting teams and organizations) to recognize and reward their actions and achievements.