The Baillie Gifford Prize 2020 Shortlist Announced

October 15, 2020

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is delighted to announce the 2020 shortlist.

A virtual celebration of the shortlist will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube on October 15 at 5pm BST. Hear from this year’s judges Martha Kearney (chair), Shahidha Bari, Simon Ings, Leo Robson, Max Strasser and Bee Wilson as they discuss how they selected this year’s shortlist.

The 2020 shortlist:

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown (Harper Collins, 4th Estate)
The Idea of the Brain: A History by Matthew Cobb (Profile Books)
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh (Penguin Random House, Allen Lane)
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Christina Lamb (Harper Collins, William Collins)
Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Woman’s Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Amy Stanley (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury Publishing, Bloomsbury Circus)

The shortlist has been chosen by a panel chaired by BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Martha Kearney together with fellow BBC presenter, professor and author Shahidha Bari, editor and novelist Simon Ings, New Statesman writer Leo Robson, New York Times opinion editor Max Strasser and journalist and author Bee Wilson.

Martha Kearney, chair of judges, says:
“In 2020 we certainly learned that truth is stranger than fiction and our shortlist shows the sheer power of real life stories. From brain science to Beatlemania, Shoguns to suburban poltergeists, sex slavery to slave rebellions, this is our eclectic lockdown library.”

On Friday, tune into the shortlist episode of Read Smart, the Baillie Gifford Prize podcast, where podcast host, BBC’s Razia Iqbal explores each of the 6 shortlisted titles and authors with 2020 judges Martha Kearney, Simon Ings and Max Strasser. Read Smart is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher and Entale.

The winner of the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced in a virtual celebration on Tuesday 24 November.

The podcast series and awards dinner is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.