A professor at Durham University has won one of the world’s top writing prizes. Prof Edmund Richardson has won the Baillie Gifford Prize, often described as the world’s most prestigious award for non-fiction, for his biography of Alexander the Great.
A Decade of Research and a Historic Win
The award’s judges described the book, Alexander: God, King, Man, as “non-fiction writing at its very best”. It is the first book about ancient history to win the prize in its 27-year history.
Prof Richardson spent more than a decade researching the legendary Greek leader, using new technology such as genetic sequencing. It also involved translating material from 12 ancient languages.
Prize and Recognition
Prof Richardson, whose book has won wide acclaim around the world, receives a prize of £50,000. He said: “The other authors are some of my actual heroes. It’s truly a list of wonders, of books that make the world brighter and stranger and better.
“I can’t believe that Alexander gets to keep such books company – but I’m very grateful, and very glad, that it has happened!”
The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is widely recognised as the world's most prestigious award for literary non-fiction. It is open to books on any subject and to writers of any nationality. Over its history it has been won by some of the world’s best non-fiction writers.
Shortlist and Judging
The other writers shortlisted for the award this year included Patrick Radden Keefe, for London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, a biography of James Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs, and Matthew Sweet’s The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland.
Broadcaster Kirsty Lang, who chaired this year’s judging panel, said: “Alexander: God, King, Man is non-fiction writing at its very best: a book that, like its subject, can’t stop pressing onward.
“It’s a blockbuster history with page-turning narrative pull, a cracking cinematic story about the ancient world involving a masterful assembly of research materials alongside exceptional literary craft. Richardson combines the use of new technology and recent archaeological discoveries to tell the story of an extraordinary leader who conquered an empire stretching from Ancient Greece to the Indian subcontinent.”
