An “immersive” biography of Alexander the Great has won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.
University of Durham historian Professor Edmund Richardson, 44, said winning the £50,000 prize for his book, Alexander: God, King, Man, is “one of the greatest honours of my life”.
It is the first time a title covering ancient history has won the prize since the award was launched in 1999, and the first major prize for Prof Richardson.
He said in a statement: “To tell you the absolute truth, I still don’t believe it.
“When you write about the ancient world, when you write about stories over 2000 years old, you don’t expect people to pay attention.
“You work with lost and forgotten things, with stories that have vanished from the world. The fact that the judges, and I hope readers might see something in the story of Alexander that they connect with, and that it means something to them, means it’s a story worth telling and remembering.
“It’s one of the greatest honours of my life.”
He beat Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling: A Mysterious Death In A Gilded City And A Family’s Search for Truth, which was one of the six shortlisted titles.
The winning title was announced at a ceremony in central London on Thursday by chairwoman of judges, broadcaster Kirsty Lang, who said the book “combines the use of new technology and recent archaeological discoveries to tell the story of an extraordinary leader who conquered an empire stretching from Ancient Greece to the Indian subcontinent”.
The book is based on more than a decade of research across four continents and includes new translations of sources from 12 ancient languages.
Prof Richardson’s research took him from the catacombs of Egypt to the passes of Afghanistan.
It follows Alexander the Great’s life from his accession at 20 to a debt-ridden Macedonian throne and a restless army, to his transformation into a conqueror worshipped as a living god who died in Babylon aged 32.
Lang said: “Alexander: God, King, Man is non-fiction writing at its very best: a book that, like its subject, can’t stop pressing onward.
“It’s blockbuster history with page-turning narrative pull, a cracking cinematic story about the ancient world involving a masterful assembly of research materials alongside exceptional literary craft.”
The judging panel included the head of books at Waterstones, Bea Carvalho, writer and cultural historian Dr Tiffany Jenkins, the literary editor of The Spectator, Sam Leith, editor and reporter at The New York Times Ravi Mattu, and award-winning novelist Elif Shafak.
Their selection was made from more than 350 eligible books published between November 1 2025 and October 31 2026.
The other shortlisted titles were Days Of Love and Rage: A Story Of Revolution by Anand Gopal; Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs; The Great Dictator: A Life Of Barbara Cartland by Matthew Sweet; and Andrew Wulf’s The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life Of George Forster And His Search For Humanity.
The Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction is a prestigious international award for literary non-fiction which is open to books on any subject and to writers of any nationality.
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