2023 Shortlist

SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED 16th May 2023

Professor Roy Foster, Chair of Judges, writes:

“The Prize’s twentieth year gives us a powerful list of contenders, representing both the vigour and the variety of current approaches to historical biography. They include an empathetic biography of an Indian spiritual leader whose immense reputation in his homeland and global influence have not been fully realised in the western world; a beguiling study of the overlapping circles of radical thinkers and artists who convened at the house of their publisher friend and patron during the revolutionary era at the end of the eighteenth century; a robustly revisionist biography of Henrietta Maria, much-maligned consort of Charles I; a probing study of western supporters of Indian nationalism, revolving around the magnetic figure of Gandhi; and the concluding volume of a prodigious life of Napoleon which surveys the end of his extraordinary empire through the enmeshed and often hubristic relationships he sustained with his soldiers, diplomats, politicians and family. All these books illuminate a political and social culture by reconstructing the lives of individuals in a manner that combines pioneering scholarship with literary panache. Thus their authors respond to the challenge of historical biography with exactly the qualities which the Elizabeth Longford Prize exists to recognise.”