The Baillie Gifford Prize has revealed its 2026 longlist, with 13 books in contention for the U.K. award that honors outstanding literary nonfiction.
Nicholas Boggs made the longlist for his biography Baldwin: A Love Story. The book was a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award and the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award. Patrick Radden Keefe was nominated for London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, which is a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Prize.
Ian Buruma was longlisted for Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945, as were Edward Chisholm for Murder in Paris ’68: A True Story of Death and Glamour; Anand Gopal for Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution; Charlotte Higgins for Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War; Ben Macintyre for Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy; and Bojan Pancevski for The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World.
Also making the longlist were Alexander: God, King, Man by Edmund Richardson; Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska; Never Say War: Life in Russia Today, written by Åsne Seierstad and translated by Siân Mackie; The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland by Matthew Sweet; and The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity From the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris by Andrea Wulf.
The Baillie Gifford Prize was established in 1999. Previous winners include Anna Funder for Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall; James S. Shapiro for A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599; and Helen Garner for How To End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998.
The shortlist for this year’s prize will be revealed on Oct. 1, with the winner announced on Nov. 4.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
