The £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize is the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing. This year’s longlist spans history, biography, current affairs and natural science, with several addressing grand themes including race, court room drama, ideology, and economics.

The titles on the 2019 longlist are:

• I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
• On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming
• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple
• Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed by Catrina Davies
• The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth by William Feaver
• The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment by Amelia Gentleman
• Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovel
• The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey
• Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
• The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina

Stig Abell, editor of the Times Literary Supplement and chair of judges, said: “It’s been a summer of reading with unbridled pleasure, and I think we’ve ended up with a longlist of books that are – by turns – provocative, magisterial and beautiful pieces of work. Above all, they are companionable: stories to which you are happy to turn and return, some with contemporary resonances, others that are more timeless. Going from twelve down to six and then picking a winner is going to be a bit of a challenge.”

The shortlist will be announced on 22 October, with the winner to be revealed on 19 November. Find out more about this year’s shortlist and the Prize itself here.