The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

Andrew Holgate

Andrew Holgate (Chair) has been the literary editor of The Sunday Times since 2008 and before that was the deputy literary editor for nine years. He's been in the book world - in publishing, bookselling and literary journalism - his whole working life, was a judge on the then Samuel Johnson Prize in 2005, and runs and judges both the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. He has co-edited two books, The Test of Time: What Makes a Classic a Classic? and The Cost of Letters: How Much Do You Think a Writer Needs to Live On?, and is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Sara Collins

Sara Collins is of Jamaican descent and grew up in Grand Cayman. She studied law at the London School of Economics and worked as a lawyer for seventeen years, before admitting that what she really wanted to do was write novels. She obtained a Master’s degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Cambridge University, where she was the 2015 recipient of the Michael Holroyd Prize. In 2016, she was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish prize for The Confessions of Frannie Langton, her first novel, a gothic romance about the twisted love affair between a Jamaican maid and her French mistress in 19th century London. The Confessions of Frannie Langton is the winner of the 2019 Costa First Novel Award.

Dr Helen Czerski

Dr Helen Czerski is a physicist, oceanographer, writer and broadcaster. She is based at University College London, where her research focus is the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the open ocean and their influence on the air-sea interface. Helen has been a regular science broadcaster on the BBC since 2011, and has a particular interest in sharing the physics of everyday life and the importance of Earth’s ocean.

Kathryn Hughes

Kathryn Hughes is the author of four books on 19th Century cultural history, the most recent of which is Victorians Undone. She is literary non-fiction critic for the Guardian newspaper and Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Dominic Sandbrook

Dominic Sandbrook is a historian and columnist. He is the author of eight books, and is best known for his series on Britain since the 1950s, most recently Who Dares Wins. His BBC TV series include The 70s and The 80s, as well as series on the Cold War, the history of science fiction and the history of British popular culture. He is a trustee of the National Archives Trust and Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and co-presents the podcast The Rest is History. He is a columnist for the Daily Mail and book critic for the Sunday Times.