The Guardian’s chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins joins American investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe and bestselling historian Ben Macintyre on this year’s Baillie Gifford prize longlist.
Higgins’ book, Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War, examines the role of culture in Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, drawing on multiple reporting trips to Ukraine. Keefe, who won the prize in 2021 with Empire of Pain, is listed again for London Falling, which tells the story of Zac Brettler, a teenager who fell from a luxury London apartment after having posed as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Macintyre’s Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy, tells the story of a KGB double agent cultivated by MI6 in revolutionary Tehran.
The 13 books on the longlist, selected from submissions published in English in the UK over the past year, range from biography and ancient history to espionage, true crime and international reportage. The prize is widely regarded as the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction.
“Chairing this prize is like being part of a very well-informed and opinionated book group,” said lead judge Kirsty Lang. “Whittling our choices down to 13 books led to some forthright discussion, but we got there in the end and are very proud of our longlist.”
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (Penguin Random House)
Murder in Paris ’68: A True Story of Death and Glamour by Edward Chisholm (Bloomsbury)
The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland by Matthew Sweet (Monoray)
The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity by Andrea Wulf (Penguin Random House)
Alexander: God, King, Man by Edmund Richardson (Atlantic)
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World by Bojan Pancevski (Penguin Random House)
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution by Anand Gopal (Bloomsbury)
Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War by Charlotte Higgins (Penguin Random House)
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre (Penguin Random House)
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe (Penguin Random House)
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska (Picador)
Never Say War: Life Inside Russia by Åsne Seierstad (Hachette)
Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945 by Ian Buruma (Atlantic)
Biography is a major theme of this year’s list. In Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major study of James Baldwin in 30 years, Nicholas Boggs examines Baldwin’s relationships and their influence on his writing, drawing on previously unseen material and interviews.
The life of another literary figure is explored in The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet. Sweet’s account of the romance novelist Barbara Cartland’s career is set against the backdrop of the changing sexual and social politics of her era. Meanwhile, Andrea Wulf’s The Traveller examines the largely forgotten 18th-century explorer George Forster, who joined Captain Cook’s second voyage around the world as a teenager.
Contemporary conflicts also loom large. In Days of Love and Rage, Anand Gopal reports from Manbij, Syria, during the revolution, telling the stories of people who helped overthrow a dictatorship. The Bookseller of Kabul author Åsne Seierstad offers an account of contemporary Russia in Never Say War; while Ian Buruma’s Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945 examines how ordinary people navigated life under the Nazi regime. Ancient history is represented by Edmund Richardson’s Alexander: God, King, Man, a portrait of Alexander the Great.
In The Nord Stream Conspiracy the Wall Street Journal political correspondent Bojan Pancevski probes the sabotage of North Sea gas pipelines. While Murder in Paris ’68 by Edward Chisholm revisits one of French cinema’s most notorious scandals: the murder of actor Alain Delon’s bodyguard, Stefan Marković.
Completing this year’s longlist, Jane Rogoyska’s Hotel Exile tells the wartime story of the Hôtel Lutetia in Paris which was transformed from a gathering place for refugee artists, activists and intellectuals into the headquarters of Nazi intelligence.
The longlist was selected by Lang, Waterstones’s head of books Bea Carvalho, writer and cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins, Spectator literary editor Sam Leith, editor and reporter Ravi Mattu and novelist Elif Shafak.
The prize, established as the Samuel Johnson prize in 1999, has been sponsored by Edinburgh-based investment management firm Baillie Gifford since 2016. The company has faced criticism in recent years over its investments in fossil fuels and companies with links to Israel. In 2024, campaign group Fossil Free Books organised boycotts of literary festivals sponsored by the firm, resulting in Baillie Gifford ending its partnerships with nine festivals.
The winner will receive £50,000, with the shortlist of six announced on 1 October and the winner on 4 November. Last year’s prize was won by Australian writer Helen Garner for How to End a Story: Collected Diaries.
Browse all the books on the Baillie Gifford 2025 longlist at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
