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The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

An annual award for the most exciting new narrative non-fiction, awarded to authors of any nationality and published in the UK or Ireland.

Award Criteria

For the most exciting new narrative non-fiction book, with a preference for authors new to non-fiction writing.

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2025 Winner

WINNER

Helen Garner

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries

Shortlist (4)

1

Richard Holmes The Boundless Deep

2

Adam Weymouth Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe

3

Frances Wilson Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark

4

Viet Thanh Nguyen A Man of Two Faces

2024 Winner

WINNER

Richard Flanagan

Question 7

Shortlist (5)

1

Rachel Clarke The Story of a Heart

2

Annie Jacobsen Nuclear War: A Scenario

3

Viet Thanh Nguyen A Man of Two Faces

4

Sue Prideaux Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

5

David Van Reybrouck Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

2023 Winner

WINNER

John Vaillant

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

Shortlist (5)

1

Hannah Barnes Time to Think

2

Tania Branigan Red Memory

3

Christopher Clark Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849

4

Jeremy Eichler Time's Echo

5

Jennifer Homans Mr. B: George Balanchine's Twentieth Century

2022 Winner

WINNER

Katherine Rundell

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Shortlist (5)

1

Caroline Elkins Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire

2

Jonathan Freedland The Escape Artist

3

Sally Hayden My Fourth Time, We Drowned

4

Anna Keay The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

5

Polly Morland A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor's Story

2021 Winner

WINNER

Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Shortlist (5)

1

Cal Flyn Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

2

Harald Jahner Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich

3

Kei Miller Things I Have Withheld

4

John Preston Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell

5

Lea Ypi Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

2020 Winner

WINNER

Craig Brown

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

Shortlist (5)

1

Matthew Cobb The Idea of the Brain: A History

2

Sudhir Hazareesingh Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture

3

Christina Lamb Our Bodies, Their Battlefield

4

Amy Stanley Stranger in the Shogun's City

5

Kate Summerscale The Haunting of Alma Fielding

2019 Winner

WINNER

Hallie Rubenhold

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Shortlist (5)

1

Casey Cep Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

2

Laura Cumming On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons

3

William Feaver The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth

4

Julia Lovell Maoism: A Global History

5

Azadeh Moaveni Guest House for Young Widows

2018 Winner

WINNER

Serhii Plokhy

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy

Shortlist (4)

1

Hannah Fry Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine

2

Ben Macintyre The Spy and the Traitor

3

Thomas Page McBee Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man

4

Carl Zimmer She Has Her Mother's Laugh

2017 Winner

WINNER

David France

How to Survive a Plague

Shortlist (5)

1

Christopher de Bellaigue The Islamic Enlightenment

2

Kapka Kassabova Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe

3

Daniel Mendelsohn An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic

4

Mark O'Connell To Be a Machine

5

Simon Schama Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492-1900

2016 Winner

WINNER

Philippe Sands

East West Street

Shortlist (3)

1

Svetlana Alexievich Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

2

Margo Jefferson Negroland: A Memoir

3

Hisham Matar The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

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