The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

Rosie Boycott

Rosie Boycott (Chair) is a journalist, broadcaster and feminist. She was the first woman editor of the Independent on Sunday and The Independent, and the Daily Express. During the seventies she founded and edited Spare Rib, and then went on to found the highly successful Virago Press, publisher of women’s writing. She is also an author in her own right, amongst her titles A Nice Girl Like Me and her most recent book, Our Farm: A Year in the Life of a Smallholding.Rosie has made several appearances on Newsnight Review and other cultural and current affairs programmes, where the fact she is a recovering alcoholic has been discussed. Rosie has presented A Good Read on BBC FOUR Radio 4. She has sat on judging panels for literary prizes, including chairing the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction. She is also a media advisor for the Council of Europe. Since a near fatal car accident in 2003 Rosie has been running a farm in Somerset.

Claire Armitstead

Claire Armitstead is the Guardian's literary editor. She was previously books editor, arts editor, and is a leading expert on fringe theatre. As a published author, her titles include New Performance and she has contributed to the London International Festival of Theatre (Macmillan, 1994) and Women: A Cultural Review (essay collection), in which she wrote on women directors (Oxford University Press, 1996).

Daljit Nagra

Daljit Nagra was born and raised in West London, then Sheffield, and currently lives in Willesden where he works in a secondary school. His debut collection of poems, Look We Have Coming to Dover!,won the 2007 Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and was nominated for the Costa Poetry Award and the Guardian First Book Award. Daljit was also awarded the 2008 South Bank Show / Arts Council Decibel Award.

Professor Chris Rapley

Professor Chris Rapley is the Director of the Science Museum. He was for ten years Director of the British Antarctic Survey. Prior to this he was Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, and before that, Professor of Remote Sensing Science and Associate Director of UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory. He has a degree in Physics from Oxford, an MSc in Radioastronomy, and a PhD in X-ray astronomy. He is a Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, an Honorary Professor at UCL and UEA, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Hannah Rothschild

Hannah Rothschild has made several documentary series which have been broadcast on major public networks in Europe, Australia, America and Asia and on the BBC TV and Radio 4. Her short films and other works have won prizes at international festivals. Working Title and Ridley Scott have optioned her original screenplays. Hannah was the London Editor of Vanity Fair in the 1990s with her features appearing in W, Vanity Fair, The Telegraph, The Times, The New York Times, The Spectator, British and AmericanVogue. In the last year she’s contributed chapters to several books including one on film for Channel 4’s Anniversary celebrations and another on Corfu. She currently making a documentary feature for BBC ‘Storyville’ called The Jazz Baroness. She lectures on art at the Getty Museum in New York, the Royal Academy and the University of the Arts and is a regular interviewer at the Hay Festival and for the BBC on film and radio.