The 2020 Shortlist
Roderick Beaton
Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation
Vincent Brown
Tacky’s Revolt: the Story of an Atlantic Slave War
William Dalrymple
The Anarchy: the Relentless Rise of the East India Company
Richard M. Eaton
India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765
Kim Ghattas
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unravelled the Middle East
Kerri Greenidge
Black Radical: the Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter
Rashid Khalidi
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: a History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017
Paul Lay
Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate
Claudio Saunt
Unworthy Republic: the Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
Camilla Townsend
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
2020 Season Calendar
Finalists Announcement
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
1 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. BST
The Cundill History Prize Festival
Late November
With two full days of Cundill History Prize events including:
The Cundill Lecture in History
delivered by 2019 winner Julia Lovell
The 2020 Winner Announcement
and more to come!
The 2020 Cundill History Prize is being brought to you in partnership with:
Peter Frankopan
Anne Applebaum
Lyse Doucet
Eliga Gould
Sujit Sivasundaram
2020 Jury
The Cundill History Prize is steering through one of the most challenging moments in recent world history with an exceptional international jury of prize-winning historians and journalists.
Announcing the 2020 panel, Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University, said: “The function of the Cundill History Prize to champion the world’s best history writing as a way to better understand the present and to start mapping a future is perhaps more important than ever right now.” Read more.
“This has been an extraordinary year for history writing, with some truly exceptional books that have changed how we look at the past. As we’ve all been learning during lockdown, making sense of the world around us has never been more important. I’m very excited by the outstanding panel that have agreed to judge the Cundill Prize this year – and to working with them to find the voices and ideas that have shown again why the study of history is so important.”
Peter Frankopan
The prestigious international Cundill History Prize recognizes and rewards the best history writing
in English.
Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill History Prize generously rewards the leading historians of our time, with US$75,000 going to the winner, and the two runners up each receiving a Recognition of Excellence Award, together with US$10,000. A distinguished jury is seeking the book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal. Previous winners include Thomas W. Laqueur, Susan Pedersen, Lisa Jardine, Anne Applebaum, and Diarmaid MacCulloch.