Edmund Richardson wins the Baillie Gifford Prize with Alexander: God, King, Man
For the first time, Britain’s major nonfiction award goes to a work of ancient history built on a decade of research.
Edmund Richardson has won the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction with Alexander: God, King, Man, published by Bloomsbury. The £50,000 award was announced at BMA House in London on 4 November. It is the first time since the prize began in 1999 that the winning book has focused on ancient history. Richardson, a classics professor at Durham University, worked on the book for more than a decade, combining sources translated from twelve ancient languages with new technology and recent archaeological discoveries. The volume traces Alexander’s rise from Macedonia through the conquest of the Persian empire, seeking a balance between documentary rigour and narrative momentum. It is Richardson’s first major literary prize.