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2020
Winner
Ravenna: Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin
 
Shortlist
Himalaya: A Human History by Ed Douglas
Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee
Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca by Ferdinand Mount
A Dominant Character: JBS Haldane by Samanth Subramanian
2019
Winner
A History of the Bible by John Barton
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Shortlist
The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes
On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons by Laura Cumming
The Europeans by Orlando Figes
Margaret Thatcher: Volume 3: Herself Alone by Charles Moore
2018
Winner
De Gaulle by Julian Jackson

Shortlist
The King and the Catholics by Antonia Fraser
Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch
In Byron's Wake by Miranda Seymour
The Marshall Plan by Benn Steil
2017
Winner
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum

Shortlist
The Victorious Century by David Cannadine
David Jones by Thomas Dilworth
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
2016
Winner
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
2015
Winner
Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge

Shortlist
Charlotte Bronte by Claire Harman
Agents of Empire by Noel Malcolm
The Tears of the Rajas by Ferdinand Mount
The Poet’s Tale by Paul Strohm
Winners
2014
Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory by Patrick McGuinness

2013
The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

2012
Strindberg - A Life by Sue Prideaux

2011
Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

2010
How to live: A life of Montaigne in twenty questions and one attempt at an answer by Sarah Bakewell
2009
Trotsky by Robert Service

2008
American Prometheus by Kai Bird & Martin J Sherwin

2007
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

2006
The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple

2005
Edge of Empire by Maya Jasanoff

2004
Salonica: City of Ghosts by Mark Mazower

2003
Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne Applebaum

2002
The Architect and his Wife: Edwin Lutyens by Jane Ridley

2001
Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War by Margaret Macmillan

2000
John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920 by Robert Skidelsky
1999
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

1998
Coleridge: Darker Reflections by Richard Holmes

1997
Frozen Desire by James Buchan

1996
Thomas Cranmer: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch

1995
Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny

1994
Curzon by David Gilmour

1993
A History of Warfare by John Keegan

1992
Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 by Peter Hennessy

1991
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk

1990
Clever Hearts by Hugh & Mirabel Cecil
1989
Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson

1988
The Life of Ezra Pound by Humphrey Carpenter

1987
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes

1986
CR Ashbee by Alan Crawford

1985
Edmund Gosse by Ann Thwaite

1984
Ivy Compton-Burnett by Hilary Spurling

1983
Collected Poems by Peter Porter

1982
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann

1981
Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions by Victoria Glendinning

1980
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart by Robert Bernard Martin
1979
Tenebrae by Geoffrey Hill

1978
Life in the English Country House by Mark Girouard

1977
Missing Persons by ER Dodds

1976
Mussolini’s Roman Empire by Denis Mack Smith

1975
North by Seamus Heaney

1974
Wilfred Owen by Jon Stallworthy

1973
Alexander The Great by Robin Lane Fox

1972
Virginia Woolf by Quentin Bell

1971
Discoveries of Bones and Stones by Geoffrey Grigson

1970
Charles of Orleans by Enid McLeod
1969
The Man of Letters by John Gross

1968
New Poems by Roy Fuller

1967
The Peregrine by JA Baker

1966
The Continent of Circe by Nirad C Chaudhuri

1965
Marcel Proust by George Painter

1964
The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris

1963
John Keats: The Making of a Poet by Aileen Ward

1962
The Franco-Prussian War by Michael Howard

1961
Joseph Conrad by Jocelyn Baines

1960
Collected Poems by Andrew Young
1959
Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor

1958
Collected Poems by John Betjeman

1957
Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell

1956
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead