Six books of “high ambition, formal innovation and thrilling originality” make up the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction’s winner of winners award.
The £25,000 prize marks the 25th anniversary of the prize, with the judges choosing their shortlist from the previous 24 years of the prize. The shortlist spans history, narrative-driven reportage, investigative journalism, and literary and cultural biography.
Although there is just one British author – Craig Brown – on the shortlist, three of the books deal with British icons: the Beatles, mountaineer George Mallory and William Shakespeare.
There are three American authors – Barbara Demick, Patrick Radden Keefe and James Shapiro – on the shortlist and two Canadians – Wade Davis and Margaret MacMillan.
Two thirds of the shortlist is male, mirroring the proportion of men who have won the prize; there have been just eight female winners out of 24.
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown (Fourth Estate)
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (Bodley Head)
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador)
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World by Margaret Macmillan (John Murray)
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber)
Chair of judges Jason Cowley, who is editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, said the shortlist showed “range and quality”.
“These books are very, very exciting,” he said. “They were absolutely relevant and urgent when they were published and absolutely relevant and urgent today.”
Cowley is joined on the judging panel by academic, critic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, journalist, author and academic Sarah Churchwell and biographer and critic Frances Wilson.
Brown makes the shortlist for his 2020 winner One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, his story of the British pop group and the people within their orbit, from Yoko Ono to their psychedelic dentist, John Riley. The judges called One Two Three Four “irreverent and yet profound, biographical and yet fantastical”, praising it as a “wholly original winner of the prize”.
Meanwhile Davis’s Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, which won the prize in 2012, was described by the judges as an “epic tale of imperialist decline and the power of the death drive” that was “deeply researched and written with narrative compulsion”.
Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea, which won in 2010, was chosen by the judges because of its “seamless synthesis of personal and political histories”, the judges said. In her Observer review, Imogen Carter said of Nothing to Envy: “Demick’s important book, by illuminating previously hidden aspects of North Korean life, helps restore humanity to some of the world’s most oppressed people.”
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which won in 2021, is a history of the Sackler dynasty and tells the story of America’s opioid crisis. Lloyd Green in his Guardian review said Radden Keefe “methodically and meticulously chronicles this tale of woe and crisis, indifference and corruption”.
Originally published under the name Peacemakers, MacMillan’s 2002 winner Paris 1919 is about the Treaty of Versailles. “Witty, provocative, and wise, Paris 1919 shows how ‘peacemaking’ created the conditions for spiralling conflict, not just in Europe, but around the world,” said the judges.
The shortlist is completed by Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, which won in 2006. The judges said it was a “dazzling feat of scholarship” and a “superbly original book”, adding: “The story of four masterpieces produced against a background of intense political and cultural drama, 1599 is a biography of genius, in every sense of the phrase.”
Bari said reading all the winners in the prize’s history was a chance to “trace developments in this astonishing form of non-fiction, and it is a genre that has undergone quite astonishing transformation”. She cited the emergence of creative non-fiction with winners like Kate Summerscale for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, and the burgeoning popularity of “general audience science books” like Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman.
The winner of winners award is among a number of initiatives to celebrate 25 years of the prize, one of which is a documentary, All The Best Stories Are True, on the Baillie Gifford prize YouTube channel, which explores the prize’s origins as the non-fiction rival to the Booker.
The winner of winners will be announced on 27 April at an event held at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
To explore all the books on the Baillie Gifford prize winner of winners shortlist visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
