News
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New member’s Byzantine history
New Biographers’ Club member Cecily Hennessy is the author most recently of Imperial and Royal Child Brides in Byzantium and Beyond (Arc Humanities Press). The book focuses on the Byzantine court in Constantinople and the young females (aged fourteen or younger) who married into the royal and imperial households of Byzantium and medieval Europe to…
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Debut novel from TLP-shortlisted Helen Bain
Helen Bain, shortlisted for the 2021 Tony Lothian prize (now the Elizabeth Buccleuch prize) with Court Green: Sylvia Plath in Devon 1961-2, has developed the material she researched for that proposal into a novel, The Daffodil Days (Bloomsbury, 12 March). At the centre of the story are Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes, described…
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Hatchards and The Biographers’ Club are delighted to announce the shortlist for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025
2025 SHORTLIST Crick: A Mind in Motion – From DNA to the Brain by Matthew Cobb Francis Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet for all his drive, he was galvanised by collaboration: with Jim Watson…
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THE WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH BUCCLEUCH PRIZE 2025 IS…
The Biographers’ Club is delighted to announce the winner of the Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize 2025. David Warren, for his proposal ‘Sir Ernest Satow: A Victorian Diplomat and the Birth of Modern Japan’. The first biography of Sir Ernest Satow (1843–1929), British diplomat, pioneer Japanologist, and eye-witness to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which saw the…
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Clare Mulley’s book ‘Agent Zo’ is shortlisted for Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
The biography of Genera Elżbieta Zawacka , ‘Agent Zo’, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, placed Silver in the Military History Matters magazine’s annual book prize, and has been awarded the Republic of Poland, Foreign Ministry’s first prize for best history books over the last two years! (The presentation is next week, same…
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Miranda Seymour – Winner of the Biographers’ Club Exceptional Contribution to Biography Prize 2025
Date: Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Venue: Maggs Bros, Bedford Square Time: 6:15 for 6:45 start Tickets: £12.50 from [email protected] We were delighted to give this year’s award to Miranda Seymour, author of a string of distinguished and original biographies, from her early A Ring of Conspirators about Henry James and his circle, through lives of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and…
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Jane Dismore shortlisted
Congratulations club member Jane Dismore’s book No Country for a Woman: The Adventurous Life of Lady Dorothy Mills, Explorer & Writer (The History Press, 2025) has been shortlisted in the Biography/Memoir category for the East Anglian Book Awards 2025. https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/eaba-shortlist-25/
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Club member scales Yala Peak
Club member Rosemary J Brown has been awarded an Authors’ Foundation grant for books in progress from the Society of Authors (SoA). Endowed by Lady Antonia Fraser, the grant supports the research and writing of a biography of a woman or women. Brown used it to join an all-woman mountaineering expedition to Yala Peak (5,550…
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New book from Paul Smiddy
The latest book from Club member Paul Smiddy is Moonlight Crusaders: Special Duties Pilots over Occupied Europe (Osprey).It explores the creation, development and actions of the Special Duties squadrons, which carried spies, political figures and documents in and out of Occupied Europe. Packed with first-hand accounts and expert research, this book dives into the history…
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BLYTHE BIOGRAPHY WINS NEW ANGLE PRIZE
Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe, by Ian Collins, has won the 2025 New Angle Prize for Literature. The judges said: ‘Ian Collins moved us with the obvious affection that he has for Ronald Blythe. It is a work that is rich, insightful in its research, which gives a comprehensive but totally fascinating…