Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction announces judges for 2025 as submissions open

Today, Thursday 10 April, The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is delighted to announce its judging panel for 2025.

Literary editor of The Times and The Sunday Times, Robbie Millen will chair the panel of judges for 2025.

He will be joined by historian and author, Pratinav Anil; journalist and broadcaster, Inaya Folarin Iman; cultural historian, biographer and novelist, and previous winner of the prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett; deputy culture editor of The Economist, Rachel Lloyd; and author and biographer, Peter Parker.

The announcement coincides with the opening of submissions. Publishers will have until Friday 6 June to enter up to three non-fiction books per imprint with publication dates between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

The Baillie Gifford Prize 2025 will for the first time also reward the role of translators. For any translated work recognised by the judges on the prize’s shortlist or as its winner, 75% of the available prize money will be awarded to the author and 25% will be awarded to the translator(s).

Chair of judges, Robbie Millen says:

“The Baillie Gifford Prize has an excellent track record of recognising and celebrating mind-expanding, imaginative and surprising non-fiction. I'm looking forward to working with my fellow judges to rootle out an eclectic selection of books that will appeal to the intellectually curious.”

Toby Mundy, executive director of the Prize, says:

“It’s a thrill to unveil this panel of distinguished judges, who I’m sure will be energised and enthused by our chair Robbie Millen. Their task — to identify and reward expertise, research, relevance and literary skill — seems to me to be more necessary and more urgent than at any previous point in our twenty-six-year history.”

The winner of the prize will be announced on 4 November, following the shortlist announcement in September and longlist in August.

The prize aims to recognise and reward the best of non-fiction and is open to authors of any nationality. It covers all non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

The 2025 awards event in London is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

The Baillie Gifford Prize 2025 judges

Pratinav Anil teaches history at Oxford and reviews frequently for the Times and the Guardian. He is the author of two bleak assessments of postcolonial Indian history, one of which was picked by the Financial Times in its Best Books of 2023. Gandhi's Tomb is forthcoming from Allen Lane. 

Inaya Folarin Iman is a journalist and broadcaster. She has written columns, features, and book reviews for a range of publications, including The Telegraph, Daily Mail, and The Critic. A regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze, she frequently contributes to leading political and cultural programmes across radio and television. Inaya is the Founder and Director of The Equiano Project, a forum dedicated to promoting freedom of speech and open dialogue on issues of race, identity, and culture. She also created and hosted The Discussion, a weekly show on GB News exploring ideas, culture, and politics. Additionally, she serves as the Youth Engagement Trustee for the National Portrait Gallery.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a biographer, cultural historian and novelist.  Her most recent book is The Scapegoat: the Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham which has been described as 'fabulous' (The Guardian), 'dazzling' (Wall Street Journal) and 'stunningly good' (The Sunday Times). Her previous books include The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize (now the Baillie Gifford Prize) in 2013, as well as the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography of the Year Award.   She is a widely respected critic, and has judged a number of literary prizes: in 2020 she was chair of the judges of the International Booker Prize.  

Robbie Millen (Chair) has been literary editor of The Times since 2013 and of The Sunday Times since 2024. Before that he was deputy comment editor of The Times for more than a decade and assistant editor of The Spectator. He has been a judge for the Desmond Elliott Prize and The Orwell Prize for Political Writing

Rachel Lloyd is Deputy Culture Editor at The Economist. She is also co-host of the “Always Take Notes” podcast as well as the co-editor of “Always Take Notes: Advice From Some Of The World’s Greatest Writers” (2023). In 2021 she was nominated for Young Journalist of the Year by the Society of Editors. Before joining The Economist in 2015, she worked at literary agencies in London and New York. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Magdalen College, Oxford, and a Diploma in Script Development from the National Film and Television School.

Peter Parker is the author of two books about the First World War, The Old Lie and The Last Veteran; biographies of J.R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood; Housman Country; and A Little Book of Latin for Gardeners. Some Men in London, his two-volume anthology of queer life in the capital from 1945 to 1967, was the Times and Sunday Times History Book of the Year in 2024. He edited (and wrote much of) A Reader’s Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel and A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, and is an advisory editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has written about people, books, art, architecture and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines.