The Society of Authors is delighted to announce that the 2018 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography has been awarded to Giles Tremlett for Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen (Bloomsbury).

Roy Foster, Chair of the judges said: “The short-list for this year’s Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was both formidable and varied. However, the judges decided that Giles Tremlett’s Isabella of Castile resoundingly struck all the notes which we look for in a historical biography. Tremlett creates a panoramic landscape of fifteenth-century Spain, on the brink of its Golden Age, and paints a memorable portrait of the powerful woman who helped bring it about. The stratagems of politics, marriage, war, dynastic calculation and religious oppression are carefully and deftly delineated, as is the tension between Isabella’s private and public lives.”