Stephanie Flanders to chair judges of 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

1^st year of Baillie Gifford as new sponsor

Prize money increases to £30,000

Leading economist Stephanie Flanders is to chair the judges of the new 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, it is announced today, Wednesday 4 May 2016.

Flanders, formerly the BBC Economics Editor, is Chief Market Strategist for the UK and Europe for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

In the first year that the Edinburgh-based investment management partnership Baillie Gifford takes over as the new sponsor of the Prize, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, it is also announced that the winner will receive £30,000, an increase from   £20,000 previously awarded.

Stephanie Flanders says: “The Samuel Johnson Prize has helped changed the way we think about non-fiction writing in this country, with a yearly reminder that great books truly can come out of anywhere - and anything. Personally I'm delighted to be chairing the award in its new incarnation.”

Toby Mundy, Prize Director, says: “This is the beginning of a very significant new chapter in the story of Britain’s most prestigious non-fiction prize, as we relaunch the award with our new sponsor Baillie Gifford. We are delighted that Stephanie Flanders has agreed to be our chair and that Baillie Gifford’s support enables us to increase the prize money for the winner.”

Stephanie Flanders will be joined by four further judges, to be announced.

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2016 will open for submissions on 23 May 2016. The winner of the 2016 prize will be announced on Tuesday 15 November, following the shortlist announcement in October and longlist announcement in September.

Steve Silberman, whose popular science book Neurotribes won of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, will deliver the Baillie Gifford Lecture at the Hay Festival on Saturday 28 May.

The prize aims to recognise and reward the very best in high quality non-fiction, and is open to books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.  Authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English in any given year, are eligible. 

The 2016 Awards Dinner is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

ENDS

For further information contact:

Jane Acton or James Douglas at Four Colman Getty

Jane.acton@fourcolmangetty.com / james.douglas@fourcolmangetty.com

T: 0203 697 4247 / 020 3697 4267

 Notes to editors

• Baillie Gifford is one of the UK’s leading investment managers based in Edinburgh with around £121 billion under management and advice in equity and bond portfolios for clients in the UK and throughout the world (as at 30 June 2015). As part of its corporate citizenship programme the firm supports a number of charitable and other events and, as with its clients, seeks to build long-lasting relationships. In the literary world, Baillie Gifford has been involved with the Edinburgh International Book Festival for over 15 years and has been its main sponsor for the past three years.

• Stephanie Flanders is Chief Market Strategist in the UK and Europe for J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Stephanie was previously the Economics Editor at the BBC, covering numerous television and radio programmes, including her own radio show, ‘Stephanomics’, named after her influential blog. Prior to this she was Economics Editor for Newsnight. Before 2002, Flanders worked as a reporter at the New York Times, a speechwriter and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist, and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the London Business School. She has degrees from Balliol College, Oxford and Harvard University.

• The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, known from 1999 to 2015 as the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, is open to books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. Books published in English by writers of any nationality are eligible for the 2016 prize, provided they were published in the UK between 1 November 2015 and 31 October 2016

• The prize was first awarded in 1999, and is now worth £30,000 to the winning author, and £1,000 to each of the shortlisted authors

• Previous winners are: Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (1999), Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (2000), The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (2001), Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan (2002), Pushkin: A biography by T.J. Binyon (2003), Stasiland by Anna Funder (2004), Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (2005),1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (2006), Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2007), The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (2008), Leviathan or The Whale by Philip Hoare (2009), Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (2010), Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter (2011), Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (2012), The Pike, by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (2013), H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014), Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently (2015).

• The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction continues to be owned by Samuel Johnson Prize Ltd.  It is overseen by a Steering Committee, and administered by Four Colman Getty. The Steering Committee is made up of Stuart Proffitt, Chair (Publishing Director, Penguin), Toby Mundy (Prize Director), Antony Beevor (historian and author), Mark Bell (Commissioning Editor, BBC Arts), Caroline Daniel (Editor, FT Weekend), Peter Florence (Director of the Hay Festivals),  Dotti Irving (Chief Executive, Four Colman Getty), Lord King of Lothbury (Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England), James Naughtie (Books editor, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme), Peter Straus (literary agent, Rogers, Coleridge and White) and Martin Taylor (Financial Stability Committee, Bank of England).