Join us and winners of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize from the past 25 years – including David Olusoga, Kojo Koram, Anita Anand, Avi Shlaim, and Margaret MacMillan – as they consider the past, present and future of historical non-fiction. What is its role in an era of instability and disinformation? Through which lenses and voices should we analyse global events? And what can books do when history seems to be repeating itself?
At the end of the event, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize “winner of winners” will be announced – the previous PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize-winning book considered by returning judges to have made the most significant contribution to historical non-fiction since the millennium.
This special edition, which marks the end of the Prize, has been judged by critic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari; historian, academic and critic Kathryn Hughes; and the Migration Museum’s artistic director Aditi Anand. They will appear in conversation with the previous winners before announcing the “winner of winners”. Copies of previous winning titles will be available to buy, signed by the attending authors.
The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize of £2,000 has been awarded annually since 2002 for a non-fiction book of specifically historical content. Entrants are books of high literary merit – that is, not primarily written for the academic market – and can cover all historical periods. Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s. On her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name.