Durham Classics Professor Wins Baillie Gifford Prize for Alexander the Great Biography
Edmund Richardson has won the 2026 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction for Alexander: God, King, Man, becoming the first writer to win the award for an ancient history book since its founding in 1999. Richardson received the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on a Wednesday evening, beating a six-strong shortlist that included Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling.
The chair of judges, broadcaster Kirsty Lang, described the winning title as blockbuster history with page-turning narrative pull. She noted that the book combines new technology and recent archaeological discoveries to trace an extraordinary leader who built an empire spanning from ancient Greece to the Indian subcontinent. The biography draws on more than a decade of research across four continents, featuring new translations of sources from 12 ancient languages.
Cinematic Ancient History From Accession to Babylon
The book traces Alexander’s life beginning in 336 BC, when the 20-year-old took charge of a near-bankrupt kingdom and a barely controllable army after the assassination of his father, Philip. Richardson writes of ruthless ambition, identity crises, and a man who unleashed unprecedented violence before dying in Babylon at age 32. The author’s research took him from the catacombs of Egypt to the mountain passes of Afghanistan.
Judges selected the winning volume from more than 350 eligible titles published between November 1, 2025, and October 31, 2026. The top six books featured Anand Gopal’s Days of Love and Rage, Matthew Sweet’s The Great Dictator, Nicholas Boggs’s Baldwin: A Love Story, Andrea Wulf’s The Traveller, alongside Radden Keefe’s inquiry centered on a British teenager’s fatality. The judging panel comprised novelist Elif Shafak, Waterstones head of books Bea Carvalho, cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins, Spectator literary editor Sam Leith, and editor Ravi Mattu.
Classicists and Historians React to the Landmark Victory
Richardson called winning the £50,000 prize one of the greatest honours of his life. The 44-year-old Durham University classics professor expressed surprise that readers pay attention to stories over two thousand years old, working as he does with lost and forgotten things. Lang praised the volume as a cracking cinematic story that weaves masterful research materials with exceptional literary craft.
Computer simulation propels Alexander the Great biography to Baillie Gifford Prize win https://t.co/HMiOpLcyP5
The win caps a broader surge of public interest in antiquity. Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey drove a significant rise in sales for Homer’s epic, while poet and classicist Anne Carson received the Nobel prize. Founded in 1999 as the Samuel Johnson prize, the nonfiction award has been sponsored by investment management firm Baillie Gifford since 2016. Last year’s prize went to Australian writer Helen Garner for her collected diaries, How to End a Story.
Frequently Asked Questions About the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize
How much prize money did Edmund Richardson receive?
Edmund Richardson was awarded £50,000 at the ceremony in central London.
What other books were on the 2026 shortlist?
Among the final selections presented were Anand Gopal’s Days of Love and Rage, Matthew Sweet’s The Great Dictator, Nicholas Boggs’s Baldwin: A Love Story, Andrea Wulf’s The Traveller, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling.
Who chaired the judging panel?
Broadcaster Kirsty Lang served as the chair of judges for the 2026 Baillie Gifford prize.