Jerwood Award Explained

The Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction^[1] were financial awards made to assist new writers of non-fiction to carry out new research, and/or to devote more time to writing.^[2] The awards were administrated by the Royal Society of Literature on behalf of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

Recipients must have a publishing contract and be citizens of either the UK or Ireland, or have been residents in one of these for at least the last three years.^[3]

In 2017, the awards were replaced by the Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction.^[4]

Recipients

2016

• Violet Moller for The Geography of Knowledge, Pan Macmillan (£10k)
• Afua Hirsch for Brit(ish): Getting Under the Skin of Britain's Race Problem, Cape (£5k)
• Damian Le Bas (writer) for Stopping Places, Chatto (£5k)

2015

• Thomas Morris for The Matter of the Heart, Bodley Head (£10k)
• Catherine Nixey for The Darkening Age, MacMillan (£5k)
• Duncan White for Cold Warriors: Waging Literary War Across the Iron Curtain, Little, Brown (£5k)

2014

• Laurence Scott for The Four-Dimensional Human, Heinemann (£10k)
• Minoo Dinshaw for A Life of Sir Steven Runciman, Penguin (£5k)
• Aida Edemariam for The Wife's Tale, 4th Estate (£5k)

2013

• Tom Burgis for The Looting Machine, William Collins (£10k)
• Julian Mash for Portobello Road: Dispatches from the Street, Frances Lincoln (£5k)
• Corri Waitt for The Wisdom of Chickens, Quercus (£5k)

2012

• Ramita Navai for City of Lies: The Undercover Truth About Tehran, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£10k)
• Edmund Gordon for Angela Carter: The Biography, Chatto (£5k)
• Gwen Adshead for A Short Book About Evil, Jessica Kingsley (£5k)

2011

• James Macdonald Lockhart for Raptor: A Journey Through Britain's Birds of Prey, Fourth Estate (£10k)
• Gerard Russell for Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, Simon & Schuster (£5k)
• Helen Smith for Edward Garnett: The Uncommon Reader, Jonathan Cape (£5k)
• Polly Morland for The Society of Timid Souls, or How to Be Brave, Profile (£2k)

2010

• Alexander Monro for The Paper Trail, Penguin (£10k)
• Roger Beam for Englandspiel, Haynes (£5k)
• Jonathan Beckman for Cardinal Sins: Marie Antoinette and the Affair of the Necklace, Fourth Estate (£5k)

2009

• Caspar Henderson for The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta (£10k)
• Miles Hollingworth for St Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography, Continuum (£5k)
• Selina Mills for Life Unseen: The Story of Blindness, IB Tauris (£5k)

2008

• Rachel Hewitt for Map of a Nation, Granta (£10k)
• Matthew Hollis for Edward Thomas:The Final Years, Faber (£5k)
• Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts for Edgelands – Journeys into England’s Last Wilderness, Cape (£2.5k each)

2007

• Andrew Stott for The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, Canongate (£10k)
• Rachel Campbell-Johnston for Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer, Bloomsbury (£5k)
• Daniel Swift for A Terrible Fury, Hamish Hamilton (£5k)

2006

• Carolyn Steel for Hungry City, Chatto (£10k)
• Sarah Irving for Natural Science and the Origins of British Empire, Pickering & Chatto (£5k)
• Thomas Wright for Oscar’s Books, Chatto (£5k)

2005

• Alice Albinia for Empires of the Indus, John Murray (£12,500)
• Christopher Turner for Adventures in the Orgasmatron, Fourth Estate (£10k)
• Druin Burch for Digging Up the Dead, Chatto (£5k)
• Matthew Green for The Wizard of the Nile, Portobello (£5k)

2004

• Jim Endersby for A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology, Heinemann (£10k)
• Roland Chambers for The Last Englishman – The Double Life of Arthur Ransome, Faber (£5k)
• John Stubbs for John Donne: The Reformed Soul, Viking (£5k)

Notes and References

1. Web site: The Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction . Royal Society of Literature .
2. Web site: Jerwood Annual Reports 2016 . Jerwood Charitable Foundation .
3. Web site: The Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction . Royal Society of Literature . 2010-01-17 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100122104552/http://www.rslit.org/content/jerwood . 2010-01-22 .
4. Web site: The Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction Writer's exceptional legacy secures future of non-fiction award . rsliterature.org. The Royal Society for Literature. 17 December 2023.