• 1942 – Michael Richey, Sunk by a Mine
• 1943 – Morwenna Donelly, Beauty for Ashes
• 1944 – Alun Lewis, The Last Inspection
• 1945 – James Aldridge, The Sea Eagle
• 1946 – Oriel Malet, My Bird Sings
• 1947 – Anne-Marie Walters, Moondrop to Gascony
• 1948 – Richard Mason, The Wind Cannot Read
• 1949 – Emma Smith, Maiden’s Trip
• 1950 – Kenneth Allsop, Adventure Lit Their Star
• 1951 – Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Beautiful Visit
• 1952 – No Award
• 1953 – Rachel Trickett, The Return Home
• 1954 – Tom Stacey, The Hostile Sun
• 1955 – John Wiles, The Moon to Play With
• 1956 – John Hearne, Voices Under the Window
• 1957 – Ruskin Bond, The Room on the Roof
• 1958 – V. S. Naipaul, The Mystic Masseur
• 1959 – Dan Jacobson, A Long Way from London
• 1960 – David Caute, At Fever Pitch
• 1961 – David Storey, Flight Into Camden
• 1962 – Robert Rhodes James, An Introduction to the House of Commons, and Edward Lucie-Smith, A Tropical Childhood and Other Poems
• 1963 – Peter Marshall, Two Lives
• 1964 – Nell Dunn, Up the Junction
• 1965 – Julian Mitchell, The White Father
• 1966 – Margaret Drabble, The Millstone
• 1967 – Anthony Masters, The Seahorse
• 1968 – Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop
• 1969 – Melvyn Bragg, Without a City Wall
• 1970 – Angus Calder, The People’s War
• 1971 – Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies
• 1972 – Susan Hill, The Albatross
• 1973 – Peter Smalley, A Warm Gun
• 1974 – Hugh Fleetwood, The Girl Who Passed for Normal
• 1975 – David Hare, Knuckle, and Tim Jeal, Cushing’s Crusade
• 1976 – No Award
• 1977 – Richard Cork, Vorticism & Abstract Art in the First Machine Age
• 1978 – A. N. Wilson, The Sweets of Pimlico
• 1979 – Peter Boardman, The Shining Mountain
• 1980 – Desmond Hogan, The Diamonds at the Bottom of the Sea
• 1981 – A. N. Wilson, The Laird of Abbotsford
• 1982 – William Boyd, An Ice-Cream War
• 1983 – Lisa St Aubin de Teran, The Slow Train to Milan
• 1984 – Andrew Motion, Dangerous Play
• 1985 – John Milne, Out of the Blue
• 1986 – Tim Parks, Loving Roger
• 1987 – Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
• 1988 – Matthew Yorke, The March Fence
• 1989 – Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner
• 1990 – Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
• 1991 – A. L. Kennedy, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains
• 1992 – Matthew Kneale, Sweet Thames
• 1993 – Jason Goodwin, On Foot to the Golden Horn: A Walk to Istanbul
• 1994 – Jonathan Coe, What a carve up!
• 1995 – Melanie McGrath, Motel Nirvana
• 1996 – Nicola Barker, Heading Inland
• 1997 – Phil Whitaker, Eclipse of the Sun
• 1998 – Peter Ho Davies, The Ugliest House in the World
• 1999 – David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
• 2000 – Edward Platt (writer), Leadville
• 2001 – Susanna Jones, The Earthquake Bird
• 2002 – Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice
  • (Initially awarded to Hari Kunzru for his book The Impressionist but the author declinee the award)
• 2003 – Charlotte Mendelson, Daughters of Jerusalem
• 2004 – Jonathan Trigell, Boy A
• 2005 – Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation

• 1919 – Edward Shanks, The Queen of China
• 1920 – John Freeman, Poems New and Old
• 1921 – Romer Wilson, The Death of Society
• 1922 – Edmund Blunden, The Shepherd
• 1923 – David Garnett, Lady into Fox
• 1924 – Ralph Hale Mottram, The Spanish Farm
• 1925 – Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock
• 1926 – Vita Sackville-West, The Land
• 1927 – Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter
• 1928 – Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
• 1929 – Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer: or The Life of Cowper
• 1930 – Geoffrey Dennis, The End of the World
• 1931 – Kate O’Brien, Without My Cloak
• 1932 – Charles Morgan, The Fountain
• 1933 – Vita Sackville-West, Collected Poems
• 1934 – James Hilton, Lost Horizon
• 1935 – Robert Graves, I, Claudius
• 1936 – Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion
• 1937 – Ruth Pitter, A Trophy of Arms
• 1938 – David Jones, In Parenthesis
• 1939 – Christopher Hassall, Penthesperon
• 1940 – James Pope-Hennessy, London Fabric
• 1941 – Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
• 1942 – John Llewllyn Rhys, England is My Village
• 1943 – Sidney Keyes, The Cruel Solstice and The Iron Laurel
• 1944 – Martyn Skinner, Letters to Malaya
• 1945-1957 – No award
• 1958 – Dom Moraes, A Beginning
• 1959 – No award
• 1960 – Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
• 1961 – Ted Hughes, Lupercal
• 1962 – Robert Shaw, The Sun Doctor
• 1963 – Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
• 1964 – V. S. Naipaul, Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion
• 1965 – William Trevor, The Old Boys
• 1966 – No award
• 1967 – Michael Frayn, The Russian Interpreter
• 1968 – Michael Levey, Early Renaissance
• 1969 – Geoffrey Hill, King Log
• 1970 – Piers Paul Read, Monk Dawson
• 1971-73 – No award
• 1974 – Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
• 1975 – David Lodge, Changing Places
• 1976 – Robert Nye, Falstaff
• 1977 – Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
• 1978 – David Cook, Walter
• 1979 – P. S. Rushforth, Kindergarten
• 1980 – Christopher Reid, Arcadia
• 1981 – Douglas Dunn, St. Kilda’s Parliament
• 1982 – Timothy Mo, Sour Sweet
• 1983 – Jonathan Keates, Allegro Postillions
• 1984-87 – No award
• 1988 – Colin Thubron, Behind the Wall: A Journey through China
• 1989 – Alan Bennett, Talking Heads
• 1990 – Kit Wright, Short Afternoons
• 1991 – Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
• 1992 – Ferdinand Mount, Of Love and Asthma
• 1993 – Andrew Barrow, The Tap Dancer
• 1994 – Tim Pears, In the Place of Fallen Leaves
• 1995 – James Michie, The Collected Poems
• 1996 – Hilary Mantel, An Experiment in Love
• 1997 – John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure
• 1998 – Charles Nicholl, Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, 1880-91
• 1999 – Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
• 2000 – Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan
• 2001 – Helen Simpson, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life
• 2002 – Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village
• 2003 – William Fiennes, The Snow Geese
• 2004 – Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography
• 2005 – Justin Cartwright, The Promise of Happiness

• 2007 – William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857
• 2005 – Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting on the Eastern Frontiers of the British Empire
• 2004 – Mark Mazower, Salonica: City of Ghosts
• 2003 – Anne Applebaum, Gulag – A History of the Soviet Camps
• 2002 – Jane Ridley, The Architect and his Wife
• 2001 – Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempts to End War
• 2000 – Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes
• 1999 – Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost
• 1998 – Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections
• 1993 – John Keegan, A History of Warfare
• 1987 – Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore
• 1988 – Humphrey Carpenter, The Life of Ezra Pound
• 1975 – Seamus Heaney, North
• 1965 – Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Continent of Circe
• 1962 – Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War
• 1958 – John Betjeman, Collected Poems
• 1956 – Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: James Gordon Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey, Saville
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville, The Sea
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering

The Book of the Year

2006 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling
2005 – The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (Corgi)
2004 – Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne truss (Profile)
2003 – Stupid White Men, Michael Moore (Penguin)
2002 – Billy, Pamela Stephenson (HarperCollins)
2001 – Man and Boy, Tony Parsons (HarperCollins)
2000 – Managing My Life, Alex Ferguson (Hodder & Stoughton)
1999 – Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes (Faber & Faber)
1998 – Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (Picador)
1997 – Longitude, Dava Sobel (Fourth Estate)
1996 – Delia Smith’s Winter Collection (BBC Books)
1995 – Writing Home, Alan Bennett (Faber & Faber)
1994 – Wild Swans, Jung Chang (Flamingo)

1987 – Olive Senior, Summer Lightning
1988 – Festus Iyayi, Heroes
1989 – Janet Frame, The Carpathians
1990 – Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here
1991 – David Malouf, The Great World
1992 – Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
1993 – Alex Miller, The Ancestor Game
1994 – Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
1995 – Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
1996 – Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
1997 – Earl Lovelace, Salt
1998 – Peter Carey, Jack Maggs
1999 – Murray Bail, Eucalyptus
2000 – John Maxwell Coetzee, Disgrace
2001 – Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
2002 – Richard Flanagan, Gould’s Book of Fish
2003 – Austin Clarke, The Polished Hoe
2004 – Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore
2005 – Andrea Levy, Small Island
2006 – Kate Grenville, The Secret River
2007 – Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip

• 2007 – A.L. Kennedy, Day
• 2006 – Stef Penney, The Tenderness of Wolves
• 2005 – Hilary Spurling, Matisse The Master
• 2004 – Andrea Levy, Small Island
• 2003 – Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• 2002 – Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self
• 2001 – Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
• 2000 – Matthew Kneale, English Passengers
• 1999 – Seamus Heaney, Beowulf
• 1999 – Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
• 1998 – Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid
• 1996 – Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh
• 1994 – William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey
• 1993 – Joan Brady, Theory of War
• 1992 – Jeff Torrington, Swing Hammer Swing!
• 1991 – John Richardson, A Life of Picasso
• 1990 – Nicholas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters
• 1989 – Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions
• 1988 – Paul Sayer, The Comforts of Madness
• 1987 – Christopher Nolan, Under the eye of the clock
• 1986 – Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
• 1985 – Douglas Dunn, Elegies
• 1984 – James Buchan, A Parish of Rich Women
• 1983 – John Fuller, Flying to Nowhere
• 1982 – Bruce Chatwin, On The Black Hill
• 1981 – William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa
• 1980 – David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?