Classics professor’s biography of Alexander the Great wins 'world’s leading non-fiction prize'

5 November 2026

A man in a suit and white shirt holds a hardback book in his right hand and smiles at the camera.

Professor Edmund Richardson has won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for his biography of Alexander the Great.

Judges described ‘Alexander: God, King, Man’, as 'non-fiction writing at its very best'.

Edmund, a historian of ancient Greece and its afterlives in our Department of Classics and Ancient History, collected the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London.

First award to a book covering ancient history

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is widely recognised as the world's most prestigious international award for literary non-fiction that is open to books on any subject and to writers of any nationality.

This is the first time the prize has been awarded to a book covering ancient history since its founding as the Samuel Johnson Prize in 1999.

Others shortlisted included Patrick Radden Keefe, for ‘London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth’, a biography of James Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs, and Matthew Sweet’s ‘The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland’.

The other authors...are some of my actual heroes. It’s truly a list of wonders, of books that make the world brighter and stranger and better. I can’t believe that Alexander gets to keep such books company – but I’m very grateful, and very glad, that it has happened!

Professor Edmund Richardson

Department of Classics and Ancient History

A decade of research and writing

‘Alexander: God, King, Man’ took Edmund a decade to research and write.

As reported in The Times newspaper the book 'builds on recent advances in genetic sequencing, archaeological discoveries and the unearthing of cuneiform tablets ripe for deciphering'.

... (it is ) wonderful to have an academic from a British university winning the leading non-fiction prize in the world. (‘Alexander: God, King, Man’ is)…non-fiction writing at its very best: a book that, like its subject, can’t stop pressing onward.

Kirsty Lang

Chair of judges, the Baillie Gifford Prize

Find out more

More about Professor Edmund Richardson in our Department of Classics and Ancient History.
Our Department of Classics and Ancient History is ranked joint 29^th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026.Visit our Classics and Ancient History webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
Edmund is also a member of our Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.
About the Baillie Gifford Prize in Non-Fiction.
Explore Transformative Humanities at Durham.