Biography winners

Winners of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography.

Please note these are listed by year of publication.

2020-present

George Szirtes - The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter (MacLehose Press) - 2019
Lindsey Hilsum - In Extremis The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin (Chatto and Windus) - 2018
Craig Brown - Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret (4th Estate) - 2017
Laura Cumming - The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez (Chatto and Windus) - 2016
James Shapiro - 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (Faber and Faber) - 2015
Richard Benson - The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Family (Bloomsbury) - 2014
Hermione Lee - Penelope Fitzgerald: A life (Chatto & Windus) - 2013
Tanya Harrod - The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture (Yale University Press) - 2012
Fiona MacCarthy - The Last Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination (Faber & Faber) - 2011
Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China (Profile Books Ltd) - 2010

John Carey - William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (Faber) - 2009
Michael Holroyd - A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families (Chatto & Windus) - 2008
Rosemary Hill - God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (Allen Lane) - 2007
Byron Rogers - The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R.S. Thomas (Aurum Press) - 2006
Sue Prideaux - Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream (Yale University Press) - 2005
Jonathan Bate - John Clare: A Biography (Picador) - 2004
Janet Browne - Charles Darwin: Volume 2 - The Power of Place (Jonathan Cape) - 2003
Jenny Uglow The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730-1810 (Faber) - 2002
Robert Skidelsky - John Maynard Keynes: Volume 3 Fighting For Britain 1937-1946 (Macmillan) - 2001
Martin Amis - Experience (Jonathan Cape) - 2000

Kathryn Hughes - George Eliot: The Last Victorian (Fourth Estate) - 1999
Peter Ackroyd - The Life of Thomas More (Chatto & Windus) - 1998
R.F. Foster - W.B. Yeats: A Life Volume1 - The Apprentice Mage 1965-1914 (Hodder & Stoughton) - 1997
Diarmaid MacCulloch - Thomas Cranmer: A Life (Yale) - 1996
Gitta Sereny - Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth (Macmillan) - 1995
Doris Lessing - Under My Skin (Harper Collins) - 1994
Richard Holmes - Dr Johnson And Mr Savage (Hodder & Stoughton) - 1993
Charles Nicoll - The Reckoning: The Murder Of Christopher Marlowe (Jonathan Cape) - 1992
Adrian Desmond and James Moore - Darwin (Paladin) - 1991
Claire Tomalin - The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Nelly Ternan And Charles Dickens (Viking) - 1990

Ian Gibson - Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life (Faber & Faber) - 1989
Brian McGuinness - Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig (1889-1921) (Duckworth) - 1988
Ruth Dudley Edwards - Victor Gollancz: A Biography (Victor Gollancz) - 1987
D. Felicitas Corrigan - Helen Waddell (Victor Gollancz) - 1986
David Nokes - Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed (OUP) - 1985
Lyndall Gordon - Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (OUP) - 1984
Alan Walker - Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (Faber) - 1983
Richard Ellmann - James Joyce (OUP) - 1982
Victoria Glendinning - Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions (Weidenfeld) - 1981
Robert B. Martin - Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (OUP) - 1980

Brian Finney - Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography (Faber) - 1979
Robert Gittings - The Older Hardy (Heinemann Educational) - 1978
George Painter - Chateaubriand, Vol.1: The Longed-For Tempests (Chatto & Windus) - 1977
Ronald Hingley - A New Life Of Chekhov (OUP) - 1976
Karl Miller - Cockburn's Millennium (Duckworth) - 1975
John Wain - Samuel Johnson - 1974
Robin Lane Fox - Alexander The Great - 1973
Quentin Bell - Virginia Woolf - 1972
Julia Namier - Lewis Namier - 1971
Jasper Ridley - Lord Palmerston - 1970

Antonia Fraser - Mary, Queen Of Scots - 1969
Gordon S. Haight - George Eliot - 1968
Winifred Gérin - Charlotte Brontë, The Evolution Of Genius - 1967
Geoffrey Keynes - The Life Of William Harvey - 1966
Mary Moorman - William Wordsworth, The Later Years 1803-1850 - 1965
Elizabeth Longford - Victoria R.I. - 1964
Georgina Battiscome - John Keble: A Study In Limitations - 1963
Meriol Trevor - Newman: The Pillar And The Cloud and Newman: Light In Winter - 1962
M. K. Ashby - Joseph Ashby Of Tysoe - 1961
Canon Adam Fox - The Life Of Dean Inge - 1960

John Connell - W. E. Henley - 1949
Percy A. Scholes - The Great Dr Burney - 1948
C. C. E. Raven - English Naturalists From Neckham To Ray - 1947
R. Aldington - Wellington - 1946
D. S. MacColl - Philip Wilson Steer - 1945
C. V. Wedgwood - William The Silent - 1944
G. G. Coulton - Fourscore Years - 1943
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria's Private Secretary - 1942
John Gore - King George V - 1941
Hilda F. M. Prescott - Spanish Tudor - 1940

David C. Douglas - English Scholars - 1939
Sir Edmund Chambers - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1938
Lord Eustace Percy - John Knox - 1937
Edward Sackville West - A Flame In Sunlight: The Life And Work Of Thomas de Quincey - 1936
R. W. Chambers - Thomas More - 1935
J. E. Neale - Queen Elizabeth - 1934
Violet Clifton - The Book Of Talbot - 1933
Stephen Gwynn - The Life Of Mary Kingsley - 1932
J. Y. R. Greig - David Hume - 1931
Francis Yeats Brown - Lives Of A Bengal Lancer - 1930

Lord David Cecil - The Stricken Deer: Or The Life Of Cowper - 1929
John Buchan - Montrose - 1928
H. A. L. Fisher - James Bryce, Viscount Bryce Of Dechmont, O.M. - 1927
Rev. Dr H. B. Workman - John Wyclif: A Study Of The English Medieval Church - 1926
Geoffrey Scott - The Portrait Of Zelide - 1925
Rev. William Wilson - The House Of Airlie - 1924
Sir Ronald Ross - Memoirs, Etc - 1923
Percy Lubbock - Earlham - 1922
Lytton Strachey - Queen Victoria - 1921
G. M. Trevelyan - Lord Grey Of The Reform Bill - 1920
H. Festing Jones - Samuel Butler, Author Of Erewhon (1835-1902) - A Memoir - 1919

This article was published on 2024-10-29