Baillie Gifford Prize

Join us for the latest episode of The Read Smart podcast, where host Razia Iqbal speaks to Isabel Hilton, 2024 Chair of Judges and founder of China Dialogue and Tania Branigan, The Guardian’s foreign leader writer. Together, Razia and our guests discuss the complex cultural legacy of China, alongside the opportunities and challenges the country has encountered and continues to face.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

Join us for the next episode of The Read Smart podcast, where host Razia Iqbal joins writer, historian and former Baillie Gifford Prize judge, Ruth Scurr and Allan Jenkins, editor of Observer Food Monthly to discuss the cultural, historical and personal significance of gardens within the non-fiction landscape. Our guests explore how the action of gardening can imitate life, whilst providing a source of private solace and personal transformation.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

Tune into the first Read Smart episode of 2024 - and what a year it's set to be. With more than two billion voters in 50 countries heading to the polls, 2024 is set to be the biggest election year in history. Join host Razia Iqbal, as she delves into the topic with author and journalist, Samanth Subramanian and Associate Editor of The Financial Times, Stephen Bush. Find out our guests' predictions for this crucial upcoming year, alongside what they think the current health of democracy is looking like in the current political climate.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

Tune into the final Read Smart episode of the year, where host Razia Iqbal will be speaking to the 2023 winner John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, on how he feels following last Thursday’s announcement. Razia will also be joined by some students from the University of Birmingham, who have been following the Prize this term and share their thoughts on the world of non-fiction.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

Tune into the latest episode of the Read Smart podcast, which is dedicated to Jennifer Homans and her #BGPrize2023 shortlisted work, Mr B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century. Recognised as the first major biography of the legendary choreographer and based on more than one hundred interviews, Jennifer’s work takes readers through the tumultuous life of the man who has been hailed by The New York Times as being the “Shakespeare of dancing.”

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.

Tune into this special shortlist edition of the Read Smart podcast, where Toby Mundy speaks to #BGPrize2023 shortlisted author Tania Branigan about her book, Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution. Branigan’s book explores and uncovers forty years of rarely heard stories surrounding this Cultural Revolution, begging the question: what happens to the present when the past is repressed and buried?

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.

Tune into this special shortlist edition of the Read Smart podcast, where Razia Iqbal speaks to #BGPrize2023 shortlisted author, Hannah Barnes about Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children. Through unprecedented access to thousands of pages of documents, internal emails, unpublished reports and personal testimony from former GIDS clinicians, Hannah’s book investigates the controversial story behind the NHS’s flagship gender service for children.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.

Tune into this episode of The Read Smart podcast, where host Toby Mundy speaks to 2023 shortlisted author Christopher Clark. Christopher’s book, Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for New World 1848-1849, details this extraordinary year in European history, where demonstrators rebelled against societal structures, governments and armies lost control and revolutionary sparks flew across all of Europe’s cities.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.

Tune into the latest episode of the Read Smart podcast, where Toby Mundy will be speaking to another one of this year’s shortlisted authors, John Vaillant. John’s work Fire Weather explores the apocalyptic wildfire that took place in Fort McMurray in 2016, as well as the past and future of our increasingly flammable world. The shortlisted book delves into the intertwining histories of the oil industry and climate science, alongside the urgent reality that our planet currently faces.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.

Tune into the first of our Read Smart special shortlist episodes, where we will be chatting to all six of this year’s shortlisted authors in the run up to the winner announcement. First up, Prize Director Toby Mundy speaks to Jeremy Eichler, author of Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Music of Remembrance about how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the past.

Listen now to hear all about it. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. Follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum, generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The announcement will also be livestreamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.