The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize is awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content covering a period up to and including World War II, and published in the year of the award. The books are to be of high literary merit, but not primarily academic. The prize is organized by the English PEN. Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s; on her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name. Each year's winner receives £2,000.

2012

  • Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food
  • Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
  • David Edgerton, Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War
  • James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
  • Edward J. Larson, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science
  • Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918

2013

  • Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps
  • Chris Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
  • Nigel Cliff, The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama
  • Jonathan Dimbleby, Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein
  • Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
  • Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea

2014

  • David Crane, Empires of the Dead: How One Man's Vision Led to the Creation of WWI's World Graves
  • William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
  • Vic Gatrell, The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age
  • Charlotte Higgins, Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain
  • David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century
  • Carl Watkins, The Undiscovered Country: Journeys Among the Dead

2015

  • Mark Bostridge, The Fateful Year: England 1914
  • Jessie Childs, God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England
  • Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain
  • Robert Tombs, The English and Their History
  • Jenny Uglow, In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars

2016

  • Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
  • Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
  • Sarah Helm, If This Is a Woman – Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
  • Raghu Karnad, The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War
  • James S. Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear
  • Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945

2017

The shortlist was announced 7 June 2017. The winner was announced 10 July.

  • Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
  • Jerry Brotton, This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World
  • Susan L. Carruthers, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace
  • Dan Cruickshank, Spitalfields: The History of a Nation in a Handful of Streets
  • Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976
  • David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History
  • Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

2018

The shortlist was announced 22 March 2018. The winner was announced 24 June 2018.

  • Stephen Alford, London's Triumph: Merchant Adventurers and the Tudor City
  • Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
  • Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  • Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea
  • Lynda Nead, The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-War Britain
  • S. A. Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890–1928

2019

The winner was announced 4 December 2019.

  • Edward Wilson-Lee, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library

2020s

2020

The shortlist was announced on 29 October 2020. The winner was announced on 1 December 2020.

  • Anita Anand, The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and the Raj
  • Julia Blackburn, Time Song: Searching for Doggerland
  • Hazel Carby, Imperial: A Tale of Two Islands
  • Toby Green, A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
  • Caroline Moorhead, A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism
  • Thomas Penn, The Brothers York: An English Tragedy
  • Roel Sterckx, Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding

2021

The shortlist was announced on 14 October 2021 and the winner on 7 December.

  • Barbara Demick, Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
  • Chris Gosden, The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present
  • Helen McCarthy, Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood
  • Sinclair McKay, Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness
  • Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire
  • Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
  • Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

2022

The shortlist was announced on 7 October 2022.

  • Rebecca Birrell, This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century
  • Raphael Cormack, Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt's Roaring '20s — honourable mention
  • Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
  • Julie Kavanagh, The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge and the Murders That Stunned an Empire
  • Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
  • Ian Sanjay Patel, We're Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire
  • Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy

2023

The shortlist was announced on Thursday, November 2nd, 2023.

  • Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean, Abolition Revolution (Pluto Press)
  • Anna Della Subin, Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine (Granta)
  • Calum Jacobs, A New Formation: How Black Footballers Shaped the Modern Game (Merky Books)
  • Philippe Sands,The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
  • Julieann Campbell,On Bloody Sunday: A New History of the Day and Its Aftermath by Those Who Were There (Monoray)
  • Kojo Koram, Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray Press)

2024

The shortlist was announced on 14 November 2024.

  • Caroline Dodds Pennock, On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (W&N)
  • Robert Gildea, Backbone of the Nation: Mining Communities and the Great Strike of 1984–85 (Yale University Press)
  • Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949–1990 (Allen Lane)
  • Ian Rutledge, Sea of Troubles: The European Conquest of the Islamic Mediterranean and the Origins of the First World War (Saqi Books)
  • Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld)
  • Maria Smilios, The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis (Virago)

See also

  • List of history awards

References

  • https://www.englishpen.org/prizes/pen-hessell-tiltman-prize/ – Archive & History