The Prize Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Winner of Winners Award

We are set to celebrate our 25^th anniversary by holding a Winner of Winners Award to recognise the outstanding work of the previous 24 prizewinners. This special one-off award will crown the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years of the prize.

The judges of the Winner of Winners Award are: New Statesman editor-in-chief, Jason Cowley (chair); academic, critic and broadcaster, Shahidha Bari; journalist, author and academic, Sarah Churchwell; and biographer and critic Frances Wilson.

Together they will select a shortlist from the 24 previous winners of the prize (announced on 9 March), before choosing an overall winner. The winner will be announced on 27 April at an event held at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The anniversary will also be marked by a one-off documentary – All The Best Stories Are True – which explores the very best in non-fiction writing over the past 25 years. From nail-biting moments to life changing stories, the documentary uncovers how the prize started out as the non-fiction rival to the Booker, and what the next 25 years hold for readers and writers in a world now steeped in ‘fake news’. It will be available to watch on the Baillie Gifford Prize YouTube this February.

In addition to this, Waterstones will be celebrating the 25^th anniversary with displays of all 24 previous winners, paying tribute to the Baillie Gifford Prize’s history and influence as the biggest UK-based non-fiction book prize.

The 24 books in contention are (by year of win):

1999

Antony Beevor
Stalingrad
(Viking, Penguin Random House)

2000

David Cairns
Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869
(Allen Lane, Penguin Random House UK)

2001

Michael Burleigh
The Third Reich: A New History
(Macmillan, Pan Macmillan)

2002

Margaret Macmillan
Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed The World
(John Murray Press, Hachette)

2003

T.J. Binyon
Pushkin: A Biography
(HarperCollins)

2004

Anna Funder
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
(Granta)

2005

Jonathan Coe
Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
(Picador, Pan Macmillan)

2006

James Shapiro
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
(Faber & Faber)

2007

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
(Bloomsbury)

2008

Kate Summerscale
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Or, The Murder at Road Hill House
(Bloomsbury)

2009

Philip Hoare
Leviathan, or the Whale
(4th Estate, HarperCollins)

2010

Barbara Demick
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea
(Granta)

2011

Frank Dikötter
Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 
(Bloomsbury)

2012

Wade Davis
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest
(The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)

2013

Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War
(4^th Estate, HarperCollins)

2014

Helen Macdonald
H is for Hawk
(Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House)

2015

Steve Silberman
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently
(Allen and Unwin)

2016

Philippe Sands
East West Street: on the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity
(Weidenfeld & Nicholson, The Orion Publishing Group)

2017

David France
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
(Picador, Pan Macmillan)

2018

Serhii Plokhy
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
(Allen Lane, Penguin Random House UK)

2019

Hallie Rubenhold
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
(Doubleday, Penguin Random House UK)

2020

Craig Brown
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
(4^th Estate, HarperCollins)

2021

Patrick Radden Keefe
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
(Doubleday, Penguin Random House UK)

2022

Katherine Rundell
Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
(Faber & Faber)