The £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize (formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize) is the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing. It covers all non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.
This year’s longlist has recently been announced. Here is the longlist in full:
- Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
- The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
- How to Survive A Plague by David France
- Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins
- Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
- I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad by Soaud Mekhennet
- An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
- A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rosselis and the Fight Against Mussolini by Caroline Moorehead
- To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
- The Story of The Jews: Belonging by Simon Schama
- Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow
Chair of Judges, Sir Peter Bazalgette, says: ‘We’re really excited about this longlist. We’ve got history, science, biography, polemic and memoir. But two things link them all – they’re wonderfully well-written and they’re really contemporary.’
The shortlist will be announced on 6 October, and the winner will be announced on 16 November. The winner will receive £30,000 and each of the shortlisted authors will receive £1,000. Find out more about the Baillie Gifford prize here.
