The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre (Chair) has written a weekly column in The Times since 1998 on history, espionage, art, politics and foreign affairs. He is the author of eight non-fiction history books, including the bestselling A Foreign Field (2001) and Agent Zigzag (2007) which was short-listed for the Costa Biography of the Year Award and the National Book Awards, and has recently been optioned by New Line Cinema. His most recent book, Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that changed the course of World War II reached number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list and has sold more than 400,00 copies worldwide.

David Goodhart

David Goodhart, founder editor of Prospect magazine was educated at Eton College and York University (where he got a first class degree in history and politics). He worked at the Financial Times (1982-1994) before taking a year's leave of absence to raise the money to start Prospect magazine which he edited until the January 2011 when Bronwen Maddox, former Times foreign editor, took over. He is now Prospect’s editor-at-large. He has written one book, Eddie Shah and the Newspaper Revolution (with Patrick Wintour), and is currently writing another on the meaning of citizenship. He is married to FT columnist Lucy Kellaway; they have four children and live in Highbury, North London.

Sam Leith

Sam Leith is a former Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph, and contributes regular columns and reviews to The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Spectator and Prospect. He’s the author of two previous non-fiction books: Dead Pets and Sod's Law. His first novel, The Coincidence Engine, is published in April by Bloomsbury and a book about rhetoric will be published by Profile Books in the autumn. He lives in Archway, North London with his fiancée and daughter.

Brenda Maddox

Brenda Maddox is an author and prize-winning biographer. Her biography George's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats (1999), was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Brenda holds a degree in English literature cum laude from Harvard and is an honorary member of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild and of the Association of British Science Writers. She is a currently a member of the board of the British Journalism Review and has been for many years a vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival. The widow of Sir John Maddox, she has two children, both writers, and two stepchildren.

Amanda Vickery

Amanda Vickery is a prize-winning historian, writer and broadcaster. She is Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her books include Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale, 2009) and The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (Yale, 1998) which won the Wolfson, the Whitfield and the Longman-History Today Prize. She is the writer and presenter of BBC Radio 4 ‘Voices from the Old Bailey’ and ‘A History of Private Life’ and BBC2 ‘At Home with the Georgians’. Amanda reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and the Guardian.