The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its motto "All the best stories are true", the prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English. The longlist, shortlist and winner is chosen by a panel of independent judges, which changes every year. Formerly named after English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the award was renamed in 2015 after Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm and the primary sponsor. Since 2016, the annual dinner and awards ceremony has been sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
The prize is governed by the Board of Directors of The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction Limited, a not-for-profit company. Since 2018, the Chair of the Board has been Sir Peter Bazalgette, who succeeded Stuart Proffitt, the chair since 1999. In 2015, Toby Mundy was appointed as the Prize's first director.
History
Prior to the establishment of the Samuel Johnson Prize, Britain's premier literary award for non-fiction was the NCR Book Award, which had been established in 1987. In 1997, the NCR Award experienced a scandal when it was revealed the judges, many of them chosen for their popularity rather than literary qualities, had used "ghost readers" and were not expected to read the books they voted on. In response, one of the previous winners of NCR Award, the historian Peter Hennessy, approached Stuart Proffitt, a Publishing Director at Penguin Press, with the idea for a new award. An anonymous benefactor was found who funded the establishment of the Prize, and managed by BBC Two. The new name reflected the BBC's commitment to broadcasting coverage of the Prize on the BBC2 programme, The Culture Show.
Prior to the 2009 name change, the winner received , and each finalist received . After 2009, the award was for the winner, and each finalist received . In 2015, funding for the prize was arranged by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, while the organisers sought new primary sponsors from 2016 onwards.
In 2016, under new sponsors Baillie Gifford, the prize money was restored to for the winner.
In 2019, following the announcement that Baillie Gifford will sponsor the award until at least 2026, the prize money was increased to £50,000.
It is widely recognised as the UK's most prestigious award for non-fiction authors.
Winners and shortlists
1990s
{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible"
|+1990s Samuel Johnson Prize winners and shortlists
!Year
!Author
!Title
!Result
!Ref.
|- style="background:#cddeff"
! rowspan="6" |1999
|
|Stalingrad
|
|
|-
|
|Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man (about Pontius Pilate)
|
|
|-
|
|Playing the Moldovans at Tennis
|
|
|-
|
|Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W. B. Yeats (about W. B. Yeats)
|
|
|-
|
|Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|John Clare: A Biography (about John Clare)
|
|
|-
|
|Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
|
|
|-
|
|Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties
|
|
|-
|
|Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
|
|
|-
|
|Crow Country
|
|
|-
|
|Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
|
|
|-
|
|Bad Science
|
|
|-
|
|Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics
|
|
|-
|
|Blood Knots: On Fathers, Friendship and Fishing
|
|
|-
|
|Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (biography of Caravaggio)
|
|
|-
|
|Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
|
|
|-
|
|Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|Empires of the Dead: How One Man's Vision led to the Creation of WWI's World Graves
|
|
|-
|
|Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
|
|
|-
|
|Roy Jenkins: A Biography (about Roy Jenkins)
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (about Ted Hughes)
|
|
|-
|
|Landmarks
|
|
|-
|
|Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
|
|
|-
|
|Negroland: A Memoir
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
|
|
|-
|
|Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine
|
|
|-
|
|'
|
|
|-
|
|Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
|
|
|-
|
|On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons
|
|
|-
|
|Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
|
|
|-
|
|Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape
|
|
|-
|
|Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955
|
|
|-
|
|Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire
|
|
|-
|
|' (about Rudolf Vrba)
|
|
|- style="background:#"
|
|Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children
|
|
|-
|
|Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution,
|
|
|- style="background:#"
|
|The Story of a Heart
|
|
|-
|
|Nuclear War: A Scenario
|
|
|-
|
|The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s
|
|
|-
|
|The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief
|
| The judging panel was chaired by Jason Cowley (New Statesman editor-in-chief) and included Shahidha Bari (academic, critic and broadcaster), Sarah Churchwell (journalist, author and academic), and Frances Wilson (biographer and critic).
|-
|
|One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
|2020
|
|
|-
|
|Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest
|2012
|
|