Fond Books
Archive Collection

Baillie Gifford Prize Winners

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Year Title & Author Historical Context
2025 How to End a Story by Helen Garner The first diary collection to win the prize; Garner, at 82, became the oldest winner in its history.
2024 Question 7 by Richard Flanagan Flanagan is the first person to win both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize.
2023 Fire Weather by John Vaillant Won during a record-breaking year for wildfires, making its climate warnings feel particularly prescient.
2022 Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell Rundell, a children's author, wrote this to make 17th-century poetry feel modern and urgent.
2021 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe Led to major museums, including the Met and the Louvre, stripping the Sackler name from their galleries.
2020 One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown Brown is a famous satirist; his 'scattergun' approach was praised for capturing fame better than a timeline.
2019 The Five by Hallie Rubenhold Rubenhold's research debunked the myth that all victims were sex workers; most were simply destitute.
2018 Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy Plokhy was living in Ukraine just 300 miles from Chernobyl at the time, giving him a haunting perspective.
2017 How to Survive a Plague by David France The author was a journalist on the front lines; the book grew from his Oscar-nominated documentary.
2016 East West Street by Philippe Sands The inventors of 'Genocide' and 'Crimes Against Humanity' both studied in the author's family's ancestral town.
2015 NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman The first science-focused book to win the prize, broadening the definition of narrative non-fiction.
2014 H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald A runaway bestseller credited with launching a new wave of 'grief-memoir' nature writing.
2013 The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Winner of the Samuel Johnson, Costa, and Duff Cooper prizes, making it a highly decorated biography.
2012 Into the Silence by Wade Davis Davis spent 12 years researching, arguing Everest was a 'test of manhood' for a broken generation.
2011 Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter Lauded for using provincial archives that revised the estimated death toll upward to 45 million.
2010 Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick Demick focused on the city of Chongjin to avoid the 'staged' feel of reporting from the capital.
2009 Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare The author did research by swimming with wild whales, lending the book a visceral, physical quality.
2008 The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale The case was the original inspiration for Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins in inventing the detective genre.
2007 Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran Served as the primary source for the 2010 film 'Green Zone' starring Matt Damon.
2006 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro Pioneered the 'micro-biography' trend—focusing on one year rather than a cradle-to-grave approach.
2005 Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe A rare case of a famous novelist (Coe) writing the biography of a forgotten one, reviving interest in his work.
2004 Stasiland by Anna Funder Funder was an Australian lawyer living in Berlin; the book brought the 'hidden' history of the Stasi to a global audience.
2003 Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon Binyon was an Oxford don who spent decades researching Russian archives; this remains the definitive account.
2002 Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan The author is the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, one of the central figures in those negotiations.
2001 The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh Won for the unique argument that Nazism was a pseudo-religious cult filling a vacuum in German society.
2000 Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness (Vol. 2) by David Cairns Took Cairns 30 years to complete and is considered the greatest musical biography in the English language.
1999 Stalingrad by Antony Beevor The inaugural winner; it sold over 1 million copies, proving rigorous military history could be a commercial success.