• The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849 by Christopher Clark
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frederick Studemann

If you’re looking for compelling stories that also happen to be true, the UK’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is a great place to start. Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times, talks us through the six brilliant books that made the 2023 shortlist, from a gripping account of a 2016 firestorm in Alberta to the shadow the Cultural Revolution continues to cast over today’s China. Read more nonfiction book recommendations on Five Books

  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown by Anna Keay
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story by Polly Morland
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Caroline Sanderson

Every year the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize pick out the best nonfiction books published in the United Kingdom over the previous 12 months. Author and books journalist Caroline Sanderson, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2022 shortlist, books that are important, readable and will hopefully surprise you.

  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner & Shaun Whiteside (translator)
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain's Most Notorious Media Baron by John Preston
  • The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist - Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Kathryn Hughes

Every year the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize pick out the very best nonfiction books, the shortlist they come up with a brilliant way to find gripping books to immerse yourself in. Here cultural historian Kathryn Hughes, one of this year’s judges, talks us through the six books they chose for the 2021 shortlist, books that will draw you in, whatever the subject.

  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Emil and the Detectives by Eileen Hall (translator) & Erich Kästner
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Private View: The Lively World of British Art by Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), Bryan Robertson & John Russell
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - A Free House!: Or, The Artist as Craftsman by Walter Richard Sickert
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Memoirs of the Life of John Constable: Composed Chiefly of His Letters by C.R. Leslie
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Nollekens and his Times: Comprehending A Life Of That Celebrated Sculptor, And Memoirs Of Several Contemporary Artists

The best books on Lucian Freud, recommended by William Feaver

Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to his confidante and frequent collaborator, William Feaver, on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver’s transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume biography. He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century.