Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of Winners | 25 years
Sun 23 Apr 2023 | 6:00pm - 7:00pm



The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, the Winner of Winners Award will crown the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years, recognising the outstanding work of all previous 24 prize-winners. The shortlisted authors are Craig Brown, Wade Davis, Barbara Demick, Patrick Radden Keefe, Margaret MacMillan and James Shapiro.
We are delighted to welcome three of the shortlisted authors. Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea’s third largest city; Craig Brown’s One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time is a dynamic, fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four; and Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty is a jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing and a parable of 20th Century greed
Shortlisted books:
Craig Brown | One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (4th Estate, HarperCollins) – 2020
Wade Davis | Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) – 2012
Barbara Demick | Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Granta) – 2010
Patrick Radden Keefe | Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (Picador) – 2021
Margaret Macmillan | Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World (formerly Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed The World) (John Murray Press, Hachette) – 2002
James Shapiro | 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (Faber & Faber) – 2006
Shortlisted books:
Craig Brown | One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (4th Estate, HarperCollins) – 2020
Wade Davis | Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) – 2012
Barbara Demick | Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Granta) – 2010
Patrick Radden Keefe | Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (Picador) – 2021
Margaret Macmillan | Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World (formerly Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed The World) (John Murray Press, Hachette) – 2002
James Shapiro | 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (Faber & Faber) – 2006
Venue: Baillie Gifford stage (Old Divinity School)
Duration: 1hr
Choose your tickets:
Chair biography
Razia Iqbal is one of the main presenters of Newshour, the flagship news and current affairs programme on BBC World Service. She also regularly presents The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. She was the BBC’s arts correspondent for a decade, covering arts and culture for radio and television news. She also presented Talking Books on BBC World TV: an in depth interview programme with leading writers.
Razia has been a journalist with the BBC for nearly three decades, and has worked as a political reporter and as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Most recently, she has covered the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US; the Turkish elections and travelled in India and Pakistan making programmes for radio and television. She was born in Kampala, Uganda and moved to London as a child.