The Hessell-Tiltman History Prize is awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content covering a period up to and including
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, and published in the year of the award. The books are to be of high literary merit, but not primarily academic. The prize is organized by the
English PEN
Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's first non-governmental organisations and among the first international bodies advocating for human rights. English PEN was the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' associat ...
. Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s; on her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name. Each year's winner receives £2,000.
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by
PEN International
PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internatio ...
Margaret MacMillan
Margaret Olwen MacMillan, (born 1943) is a Canadian historian and professor at the University of Oxford. She is former provost of Trinity College, Toronto, and professor of history at the University of Toronto and previously at Ryerson Univer ...
James Buchan
James Buchan (born 11 June 1954) is a Scottish novelist and historian.
Biography
Buchan is a son of the late William Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir, and grandson of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, the Scottish novelist and diplomat. He has se ...
Richard A. Fletcher
Richard Alexander Fletcher (28 March 1944, in York, England – 28 February 2005, in Nunnington, England) was a historian who specialised in the medieval period.
Early years
Richard Fletcher was the eldest child and only son of Alexander Kendal ...
, ''The Cross and the Crescent: The Dramatic Story of the Earliest Encounters Between Christians and Muslims''
*
Tom Holland
Thomas Stanley Holland (born 1 June 1996) is an English actor. His accolades include a British Academy Film Award, three Saturn Awards, a Guinness World Record and an appearance on the ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 Europe list. Some publications h ...
Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest (8 December 1926 – 11 September 2006) was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor who was best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including a biography of Adolf Hitler and books about ...
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commenta ...
, ''The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944–1945'' (joint winners)
* Mark Mazower, ''Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950''
* Richard Overy, ''The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia'' (joint winners)
* Jonathan Phillips, ''The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople''
Simon Schama
Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
He fi ...
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Bryan Ward-Perkins is an archaeologist and historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the transitional period between those two eras, an historical sub-field also known as Late Antiquity. Ward-Perkins ...
, ''The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization''
2007
* Jerry Brotton, ''The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection ''
*
Deborah Cohen
Deborah Anne Cohen (born 1968) is an American historian of modern Europe and Britain. She is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Northwestern University.
Education and career
Cohen is of Ukrainian Jewish des ...
Adam Tooze
John Adam Tooze (born 1967) is an English historian who is a professor at Columbia University, Director of the European Institute and nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe. Previously, he was Reader in Twentieth-Century History at the Universi ...
* Mark Mazower, ''Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe''
*
Philipp Blom
Philipp Blom (born 1970) is a German historian, novelist, journalist and translator.
Biography
Blom was born in Hamburg, Germany, grew up in Detmold, and studied in Vienna and Oxford. He holds a DPhil in Modern History from Oxford University. Af ...
, ''The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West 1900–1914''
* Leo Hollis, ''The Phoenix: St Paul's Cathedral and the Men Who Made Modern London ''
* Frederick Spotts, ''The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation''
* Clair Wills, ''That Neutral Island''
2009
* Mark Thompson, ''The White War: Life & Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919''
* Amanda Foreman, ''A World on Fire: an Epic History of Two Nations Divided''
* Philip Mansel, ''Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe in the Mediterranean''
* Roger Moorhouse, ''Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital 1939–1945''
*
Toby Wilkinson
Toby Alexander Howard Wilkinson, (born 1969) is an English Egyptologist and academic. After studying Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, he was Lady Wallis Budge Research Fellow in Egyptology at Christ's College, Cambridge (1993 to 199 ...
, ''The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: the History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra''
2012
* Lizzie Collingham, ''The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food''
* Norman Davies, ''Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe''
* David Edgerton, ''Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War''
*
James Gleick
James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonficti ...
Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild (; born October 5, 1942) is an American author, journalist, historian and lecturer. His best-known works include '' King Leopold's Ghost'' (1998), '' To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918'' (2011), ''Bu ...
, ''To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918''
Mark Bostridge
Mark Bostridge is a British writer and critic, known for his historical biographies.
He was educated at Westminster School and read Modern History at St Anne's College, Oxford, from 1979 to 1984. At Oxford, he was awarded the Gladstone Memorial ...
, ''The Fateful Year: England 1914''
* Jessie Childs, ''God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England''
*
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism. He is a professor at the University of Bristol, has written 14 b ...
, ''Pagan Britain''
*
Robert Tombs
Robert Paul Tombs (born 8 May 1949) is a British historian of France. He is professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Prior to this, he was a reader in the subject until 200 ...
, ''The English and Their History''
* Jenny Uglow, ''In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars''
Raghu Karnad
Raghu Karnad is an Indian journalist and writer, and a recipient of the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a 2022-'23 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Librar ...
The shortlist was announced 7 June 2017. The winner was announced 10 July.
* Sarah Bakewell, ''At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails''
* Jerry Brotton, ''This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World''
* Susan L. Carruthers, ''The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace''
*
Dan Cruickshank
Daniel Gordon Raffan Cruickshank (born 26 August 1949) is a British art historian and BBC television presenter, with a special interest in the history of architecture.
Professional career
Cruickshank holds a BA in Art, Design and Architecture ...
, ''Spitalfields: The History of a Nation in a Handful of Streets''
* Frank Dikötter, ''The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976''
*
David Olusoga
David Adetayo Olusoga (born January 1970) is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has presented historical documentaries on the BBC and contrib ...
The shortlist was announced 22 March 2018. The winner was announced 24 June 2018.
* Stephen Alford, ''London's Triumph: Merchant Adventurers and the Tudor City''
*
Anne Applebaum
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
She has worked at ''The Econ ...
The winner was announced 4 December 2019.
* Edward Wilson-Lee, ''The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library''
2020s
2020
The shortlist was announced on 29 October 2020. The winner was announced on 1 December 2020.
*
Anita Anand
Anita Anand (born May 20, 1967) is a Canadian lawyer and politician who serves as the minister of national defence since 2021. She has represented the riding of Oakville in the House of Commons since the 2019 federal election, sitting as ...
, ''The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and the Raj''
* Julia Blackburn, ''Time Song: Searching for Doggerland''
*
Hazel Carby
Hazel Vivian Carby (born 15 January 1948 in Okehampton, Devon) is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C & Dorathea S Dilley Professor of African American Studies & American Studies at Yal ...
, ''Imperial: A Tale of Two Islands''
* Toby Green, ''A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution''
* Caroline Moorhead, ''A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism''
*
Thomas Penn
Thomas Penn (8 March 1702 – 21 March 1775) was an English landowner and mercer who was the chief proprietor of Pennsylvania from 1746 to 1775. Penn is best known for his involvement in negotiating the Walking Purchase, a contested land cessi ...
, ''The Brothers York: An English Tragedy''
* Roel Sterckx, ''Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding''
2021
The shortlist was announced on 14 October 2021 and the winner on 7 December.
* Barbara Demick, ''Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town''
* Chris Gosden, ''The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present''
*
Helen McCarthy
Helen McCarthy (born 27 February 1951) is the British author of such anime reference books as ''500 Manga Heroes and Villains'', ''Anime!'', ''The Anime Movie Guide'' and '' Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation''. She is the co-author o ...
, ''Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood''
* Sinclair McKay, ''Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness''
* Sujit Sivasundaram, ''Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire''
*Ben Wilson, ''Metropolis''
*
Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a British Paleolithic archaeologist, broadcaster, popular science writer and author who lives in Wales. She is interested in the Middle Palaeolithic, specifically in the lives of Neanderthals; and she is one of the founders ...
The shortlist was announced on 7 October 2022.
* Rebecca Birrell, ''This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century''
* Raphael Cormack, ''Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s'' — honourable mention
*
, ''The Nutmeg's Curse''
* Julie Kavanagh, ''The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge and the Murders that Stunned an Empire''
*
Louis Menand
Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book '' The Metaphysical Club'' (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America.
...
, ''The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War''
* Ian Sanjay Patel, ''We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire''
*
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Francesca Stavrakopoulou (; born 3 October 1975) is a British biblical scholar and broadcaster. She is currently Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. The main focus of her research is on the Hebrew Bible, a ...
, ''God: An Anatomy''https://www.englishpen.org/posts/news/francesca-stavrakopoulou-wins-pen-hessell-tiltman-prize-2022/