Here’s the shortlist for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.
Today, the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, which recognizes excellence in Nonfiction from authors of any nationality published in English in the UK, announced their 2025 shortlist, six books whittled down from 350 published between November 2024 and October 2025.
“Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, international terrorists. This is who the judges have been spending time with,” said Robbie Millen, chair of judges, in a statement. “And what good company. The six books on this year’s shortlist have real breadth in terms of subject matter and style. We have been delighted by the candor and courage displayed by the sextet, by the wit and scintillating prose, by their confidence and impressive command of their subjects. It’s a shortlist that will be bold company in the darkening autumn evenings.”
The winner will be announced on November 4, and receive a prize of £50,000; each shortlist author will receive £5,000.
In the meantime, here’s the shortlist:
Jason Burke, The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s
Helen Garner, How to End a Story: Collected Diaries
Richard Holmes, The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief
Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World
Adam Weymouth, Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe
Frances Wilson, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark
