Book Awards

Every year, Stanfords, the best travel bookshop in the world (in our view), sponsors the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, with travel writers and journalists judging the best travel book in a number of categories. Here Cal Flyn, our deputy editor, takes us through the eight books shortlisted for the 2023 'Travel Book of the Year' award, taking us from Bolivia to Singapore via Europe, the Middle East and the top of Mt. Everest.

The Orwell Prizes are the UK's most prestigious prizes for writing about politics, awarded annually to books and articles that best meet George Orwell's own ambition "to make political writing into an art." Martha Lane Fox, chair of this year's judging panel, talks us through the shortlist of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, awarded annually to a nonfiction book.

Since its invasion of Ukraine last year, Russia has been much in the news, with many of us struggling to better understand its politics, history, society and culture. Fortunately, we have the Pushkin House Book Prize, which every year celebrates the best nonfiction written about Russia and available in English. Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, chair of this year's judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist.

The judges of the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize look for books that explain high quality science in an engaging and accessible way. Neuroscientist Usha Goswami, chair of the 2023 judging panel, explains why it is important to get children excited about science via books, and introduces us to the fabulous titles that made this year’s shortlist.

Every year, the judges of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award highlight the best new literary science writing. The 2023 shortlist consists of five fascinating books on subjects including the science of heartbreak, the sensory worlds of animals, and the development of mathematics. David Hu, a professor of mechanical engineering and a member of this year's judging panel, talks us through their choices.

In telling stories of lives that are often very different from our own and yet connected to us by our common humanity, biographies are some of the most compelling nonfiction books around. Five Books editor Sophie Roell rounds up some of the biographies that have won or been shortlisted for prizes in 2022.

Any end-of-year list is necessarily partial; no one person could hope to read every novel published in the English language in any given year. That's why prize lists are so useful for guiding the casual reader's literary diet. Here, our deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a brief round-up of the books that ruled victorious during the 2022 awards season.

Every year the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize pick out the best nonfiction books published in the United Kingdom over the previous 12 months. Author and books journalist Caroline Sanderson, chair of this year's judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2022 shortlist, books that are important, readable and will hopefully surprise you.

The Booker Prize is awarded each year to the best original novel written in the English language. We asked the art historian Neil MacGregor, chair of this year's judging panel, to talk us through the six novels that made the 2022 shortlist—and why fiction can be a most effective means of engaging us emotionally in social and political crisis elsewhere.

The Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize celebrates books that stimulate children’s curiosity and enthusiasm to explore, innovate and debate. Alan Wilson, Chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the six outstanding science books for kids that made the 2022 shortlist.