Search

​Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

2021
Winner
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Shortlist
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn
Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955 by Harald Jahner translated by Shaun Whiteside
Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Longlist
Consumed: A Sister's Story by Arifa Akbar
Minarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslim Europe by Tharik Hussain
The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans by Eben Kirksey
Blood Legacy: Reckoning With a Family's Story of Slavery by Alex Renton
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova translated by Sasha Dugdale
Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson
2020
Winner
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown

Shortlist
The Idea of the Brain: A History by Matthew Cobb
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Christina Lamb
Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Woman’s Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Amy Stanley
The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale

Longlist
Labours of Love - The Crisis of Care by Madeleine Bunting
Dear Life by Rachel Clarke
Eat the Buddha - The Story of Modern Tibet Through the People of One Town by Barbara Demick
The Lives of Lucian Freud: FAME 1968- 2011 by William Feaver
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
Those Who Forget: One Family's Story; A Memoir, a History, a Warning by Geraldine Schwarz
Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade
2019
Winner
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
 
Shortlist
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons by Laura Cumming
The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth by William Feaver
Maoism : A Global History by Julia Lovell
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS by Azadeh Moaveni
 
Longlist
I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan translated by Yasemin Congar
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple
Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed by Catrina Davies
The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment by Amelia Gentleman
The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey
The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina
2018
Winner
Chernobyl: History of A Tragedy by Serhii Plokhii
 
Shortlist
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine by Hannah Fry
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen Platt
She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer
2017
Winner
How to Survive A Plague by David France
 
Shortlist
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times by Christopher de Bellaigue
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell
Belonging: the Story of the Jews, 1492-1900 by Simon Schama
 
Longlist
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
Why I ‘m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini by Caroline Moorehead
Mr Lear by Jenny Uglow
2016
Winner
East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity by Philippe Sands
 
Shortlist
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich translated by Bela Shayevich
Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between by Hisham Matar
 
Longlist
The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez by Laura Cumming
Being A Beast by Charles Foster
Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings
This is London by Ben Judah
The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson

BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction

2015
Winner
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman
 
Shortlist
Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World by Laurence Scott
The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky
This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan Civil War by Samanth Subramanian
 
Longlist
Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance by Robert Gildea
The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World by Oliver Morton
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev
They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper by Bruce Robinson
Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Black Earth by Tim Snyder
2014
Winner
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
 
Shortlist
Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life by John Campbell
The Iceberg: A Memoir by Marion Coutts
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin
Common People: The History of an English Family by Alison Light
Caroline Moorehead, Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead
 
Longlist
The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life by John Carey
God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England by Jessie Childs
Hack Attack by Nick Davies
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
An Encyclopaedia of Myself by Jonathan Meades
The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson
In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars by Jenny Uglow
Romany and Tom: A Memoir by Ben Watt
2013
Winner
The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
 
Shortlist
Empires of the Dead: How One Man's Vision Led to the Creation of WW1's War Graves by David Crane
Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple
A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees by Dave Goulson
Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins
Margaret Thatcher: Volume 1: Not for Turning by Charles Moore
 
Longlist
Small Wars, Far Away Places by Michael Burleigh
The Memory Palace by Edward Hollis
Disraeli by Douglas Hurd & Edward Young
Modernity Britain: Opening the Box by David Kynaston
Diana Vreeland: Empress of Fashion by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart
The War That Ended Peace by Margaret Macmillan
Time's Anvil by Richard Morris
Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet by Jesse Norman
The Story of the Jews by Simon Schama
Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Everest: The First Ascent by Harriet Tuckey
Danubia by Simon Winder
2012
Winner
Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
 
Shortlist
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane
The Better Angels of our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes by Steven Pinker
The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston
Strindberg - A Life by Sue Prideaux
 
Longlist
One on One by Craig Brown
The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
Feathers by Thor Hansen
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genuis by Sylvia Nasar
Winter King by Thomas Penn
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie
2011
Winner
Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 by Frank Dikotter
 
Shortlist
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War by John Stubbs
 
Longlist
Tolstoy by Rosamund Bartlett
Afgansty by Rodric Braithwaite
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World by Guy Deutscher
Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky
Scott-land: The Man Who Invented a Nation by Stuart Kelly
People Who Eat Darkness: the Fate of Lucie Blackman by Richard Lloyd Parry
The Bridge by David Remnick
Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock
Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of World War Two by Daniel Swift
Sex Before the Sexual Revolution by Simon Szreter & Kate Fisher
Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy
2010
Winner
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
 
Shortlist
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos
Blood Knots: On Fathers, Friendship and Fishing by Luke Jennings
Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street by Andrew Ross Sorkin
A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
 
Longlist
The Music Instinct by Philip Ball
Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
Making Haste from Babylon by Nick Bunker
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple
Country Driving by Peter Hessler
The Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis
Family Britain 1951–1957 by David Kynaston
On Roads by Joe Moran
When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China by Hilary Spurling
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders
Dreams in a Time of War by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Magnetic North by Sara Wheeler
2009
Winner
Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare
 
Shortlist
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Quantum: Einstein. Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality by Manjit Kumar
 
Longlist
Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town by Mary Beard
A Fork in the Road by Andre Brink
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara
A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd
Darwin's Island by Steve Jones
A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
The Man Who Invented History by Julian Marozzi
Hester: the Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson's 'Dear Mistress' by Ian McIntyre
Sissinghurst: an Unfinished History by Adam Nicolson
The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani
The House of Wittgenstein. A Family at War by Alexander Waugh

BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize

2008
Winner
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
 
Shortlist
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher
Crow Country by Mark Cocker
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia by Orlando Figes
The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of VS Naipaul by Patrick French
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross
 
Longlist
Mad, Bad and Sad by Lisa Appignanesi
Miracles of Life by JG Ballard
Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey Through Symmetry by Marcus Du Sautoy
Rudolf Nureyev by Julie Kavanagh
Age of Austerity 1945-51 by David Kynaston
Mrs Woolf and the Servants by Alison Light
Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes by Ferdinand Mount
Watching the Door by Kevin Myers
Confessions of an Eco Sinner: Travels to Find Where My Stuff Comes from by Fred Pearce
Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland by Jonathan Powell
A Life of Picasso: Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 vol 3 by John Richardson
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf
2007
Winner
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
 
Shortlist
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma
Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties by Peter Hennessy
Daughter of the Desert: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell
Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control by Dominic Streatfeild
The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England by Adrian Tinniswood
 
Longlist
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 by William Dalrymple
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi
Irish Freedom by Richard English
City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London by Vic Gatrell
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
The Man Who Went Into the West by Byron Rogers
Stuff by Martin Rowson
Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr
Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq by Rory Stewart
Nabeel’s Song by Jo Tatchell
Clever Girl, A Sentimental Education by Brian Thompson
Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin
Nature's Engraver by Jenny Uglow
2006
Winner
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro
 
Shortlist
Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection by Jerry Brotton
Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland by Carmen Callil
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught between East and West by Tom Reiss
 
Longlist
The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer
The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis
Mozart's Women by Jane Glover
The Sailor in the Wardrobe by Hugo Hamilton
The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes
The Great Wall: Against the World 1000BC - 2000AD by Julia Lovell
Ancient Americans by Charles C Mann
Rosebery by Leo McKinstry
Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale
Before the Fall-Out by Diana Preston
Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq by Riverbend Riverbend
Witnesses of War by Nicholas Stargardt
After the Victorians by AN Wilson
2005
Winner
Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe
 
Shortlist
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
Istanbul, Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk translated by Maureen Freely
Matisse: The Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909–1954 by Hilary Spurling
The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

Longlist
Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson by Paula Byrne
Blood and Roses by Helen Castor
Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild
Parallel Worlds - The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku
Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi
Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 by Mark Mazower
Leonardo da Vinci by Charles Nicholl
In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War by David Reynolds
A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb
The Command of the Ocean by NAM Rodger
Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman by Frances Stonor Saunders
A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow
2004
Winner
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder
 
Shortlist
Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne Applebaum
John Clare: A Biography by Jonathan Bate
A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War by Aidan Hartley
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
2003
Winner
Pushkin: A Biography by TJ Binyon
 
Shortlist
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
The Devil that Danced on Water: A Daughter's Memoir of her Father, her Family, her Country and a Continent by Aminatta Forna
Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex by Olivia Judson
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin
Nelson: Love and Fame by Edgar Vincent
2002
Winner
Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War by Margaret Macmillan
 
Shortlist
The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village by Eamon Duffy
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes
The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies by Richard Hamblyn
Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia by Brendan Simms

Samuel Johnson Prize

2001
Winner
The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh
 
Shortlist
Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia by Catherine Merridale
Rimbaud by Graham Robb
Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag-Montefiore
John Maynard Keynes: Volume 3 Fighting For Britain 1937-1946 by Robert Skidelsky
2000
Winner
Berlioz, Volume 2 by David Cairns

Shortlist
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks
Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats by Brenda Maddox
Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley
Deliver us from Evil: Warlords, Peacekeepers and a World of Endless Conflict by William Shawcross
Karl Marx by Francis Wheen
1999
Winner
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
 
Shortlist
C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too by John Diamond
Coleridge: Darker Reflections by Richard Holmes
Hitler, Volume One Hubris 1889 – 1936 by Ian Kershaw
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes
Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man by Ann Wroe