Back to all awards
UK

Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

The most prestigious non-fiction prize in the UK, formerly known as the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Established

1999

Country

United Kingdom

Prize

£50,000

Frequency

annual

non fiction
Visit official website

Notable Past Winners

Explore some of the most celebrated books that have won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, from groundbreaking debuts to literary masterpieces that have shaped contemporary literature.

Loading cover...

2025 Winner

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries

by Helen Garner

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
Loading cover...

2024 Winner

Question 7

by Richard Flanagan

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
Loading cover...

2023 Winner

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

by John Vaillant

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
Loading cover...

2022 Winner

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

by Katherine Rundell

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
View all 21 winners

Award Winners

21 winners recorded from 2005 to present

2025
Loading cover...

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries

by Helen Garner

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2024
Loading cover...

Question 7

by Richard Flanagan

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2023
Loading cover...

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

by John Vaillant

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2022
Loading cover...

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

by Katherine Rundell

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2021
Loading cover...

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2020
Loading cover...

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

by Craig Brown

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2019
Loading cover...

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

by Hallie Rubenhold

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2018
Loading cover...

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy

by Serhii Plokhy

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2017
Loading cover...

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

by David France

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2016
Loading cover...

East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

by Philippe Sands

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2015
Loading cover...

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently

by Steve Silberman

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2014
Loading cover...

H Is for Hawk

by Helen Macdonald

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2013
Loading cover...

The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War

by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2012
Loading cover...

Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest

by Wade Davis

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2011
Loading cover...

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962

by Frank Dikötter

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2010
Loading cover...

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2009
Loading cover...

Leviathan or, The Whale

by Philip Hoare

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2008
Loading cover...

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House

by Kate Summerscale

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2007
Loading cover...

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2006
Loading cover...

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

by James S. Shapiro

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪
2005
Loading cover...

Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson

by Jonathan Coe

Buy:🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪

More UK Awards

The Booker Prize

Est. 1969

International Booker Prize

Est. 2005

Women's Prize for Fiction

Est. 1996

Women's Prize for Non-Fiction

Est. 2023