Andrew Kenrick has won the Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Prize, given for the best proposal by a first-time biographer, for Juba – From Roman Slave to African King. He received the £2,000 prize at the Biographers’ Club Christmas Party, held at Albany in London.
Kenrick is an associate tutor in the faculty of arts and humanities at the university of East Anglia. He has a PHD in life writing, with a thesis entitled “African Kings, Roman Rule: The Life of Juba II and Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania”.
Juba was raised by Octavian (later Emperor Augustus), and given the Kingdom of Mauretania (modern-day Morocco and Algeria) to rule in the name of Rome. He did this with a liberal and civilising hand. Juba was a famed antiquarian, travel writer and explorer; he discovered the Canary Islands, wrote histories of Arabia and Libya, and led diplomatic missions to fellow rulers. Kenrick’s research (now being edited for a general audience), “throws light on a corner of the ancient African-Roman world hitherto and regrettably shrouded in shadow”. They added: “The judges thought that the story was marvellous and that Ancient Rome is very much of the moment.”
The judges were Lindsay Duguid, Dan Franklin, and Catharine Morris.
Also shortlisted were Victoria Baena (A Sentimental Education – Amélie Bosquet, Gustave Flaubert, and the Writer’s Vocation in Nineteenth-Century France); Stephanie Genty (Bitter Strength – The Life and Work of Marilyn French, Feminist); Sue Laurence (Ada Chesterton – Fleet Street Bohemian and Adventurer); Andrew Moscrop (Upriver, after Fred: A Thames Journey); and Matthew Zipf (Renata Adler – At the Radical Middle).
The prize has a strong record in launching writers’ careers. Recent winners have included Francesca Wade (Square Haunting, Faber), Sarah Watling (Noble Savages, Cape), Harriet Baker (Rural Hours, Allen Lane 2024), and Sarah Harkness (Alexander Macmillan, Advocate for the Ignorant, Macmillan 2024). The 2022 winner was Catherine Haig, for An Unfinished Life: Lady Gwendolen Cecil.
The prize has a new name from next year following the death of Elizabeth, Duchess of Buccleuch, who had named it in honour of her mother (Antonella Kerr, Marchioness of Lothian). The duchess’s widower, the Duke of Buccleuch, is continuing the sponsorship of what from now on will be the Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize.
