EDMUND RICHARDSON WINS BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR ALEXANDER BIOGRAPHY

Edmund Richardson has won the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction for "Alexander: God, King, Man," his biography of Alexander the Great. He received the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday, beating a six-strong shortlist that included Patrick Radden Keefe. The judging panel, chaired by broadcaster Kirsty Lang, said it is the first ancient history title to win the prize since it was founded in 1999. Lang described the book as "blockbuster history" that "reads like a novel," saying readers "really feel that you're there on the battlefield" with Alexander.

Richardson, a professor of classics at Durham University, spent more than a decade researching the book across four continents and translated sources from 12 ancient languages himself. The book traces Alexander's life from 336BC, when he took charge of a near-bankrupt Macedonian kingdom at 20, through his conquest of the Persian empire, to his death in Babylon at 32. It draws on recent archaeological finds, including newly decoded records kept by Babylonian astronomers. Richardson told the Associated Press that "no one called him Alexander the Great in his lifetime," and that he was seen as "his father's slightly disappointing son" before he began "astonishing things."

Judges called the book "a love letter to the humanities and the work of historians and archaeologists," noting it arrives amid UK university funding cuts. Richardson said Alexander's campaign "transforms reality more profoundly than almost any other event in human history" by connecting the world in new ways. He said the expedition spread knowledge, religious belief, science and art from Babylon to Greece, Afghanistan and Italy. The win comes amid wider interest this year in ancient Greece and the classical world.