RSL Jerwood Awards

The Royal Society of Literature and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation offer three annual awards, one of £10,000 and two of £5,000, to authors engaged on their first major commissioned works of non-fiction.

The 2012 Awards

The winners of the 2012 awards were announced at a small  party on 13 December.

The judges this year were Richard Davenport-Hines, Caroline Moorehead and Gaby Wood.

This year, Ramita Navai won £10,000 for her book City of Lies (to be published in 2014), Edmund Gordon won £5,000 for Angela Carter - The Biography (to be published in 2016), and Dr Gwen Adshead won £5,000 for A Short Book About Evil (to be published in 2014).

For more information about this year's winners and the works of non-fiction that they are writing, please download the press release.

Submissions Procedure

These awards are for commissioned works of non-fiction. For further details about entry requirements, please download the 2012 application form at the bottom of the page.

Awards Date

The awards were announced on 6 December 2012 at the award ceremony.

Past Recipients

2011 James Macdonald Lockhart Raptor: A Journey Through Britain’s Birds of Prey, Fourth Estate (£10k)

          Helen Smith Edward Garnett: The Uncommon Reader,
          Cape (£5k)
          Polly Morland The Society of Timid Souls, or How to be
          Brave, Profile Books (£2k)

Judges: Andrew Holgate, Mark Lawson and Christopher Potter

2010   Alexander Monro The Paper Trail, Penguin (£10k)
           
           Roger Beam                   Englandspiel, Haynes (£5k)
           Jonathan Beckman       Cardinal Sins - Marie Antoinette  
          and the Affair of the Necklace, Fourth Estate (£5k)

Judges: Claire Armistead, Tristam Hunt MP and Robert Macfarlane

2009   Caspar Henderson The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta (£10K)

           Miles Hollingworth St Augustine: an Intellectual
          Biography, Continuum (£5k)
           Selina Mills Life Unseen: How Blindness Shaped the      
          West, IB Tauris (£5k)

Judges: Mark Bostridge, Ferdinand Mount and Claire Tomalin

2008   Rachel Hewitt Map of a Nation, Granta (£10k)

           Matthew Hollis Edward Thomas: The Final Years, Faber
           (£5k)

           Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts 
           Edgelands - Journeys into England's Last Wilderness,
           Cape (£2.5k each) 

Judges: Alice Albinia, Piers Brendon and James Meek

2007    Andrew Stott The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, Canongate (£10k)

            Rachel Campbell-Johnston Life of Samuel Palmer,
            Bloomsbury (£5k)
            Daniel Swift Bomber County, Hamish Hamilton (£5k)

Judges: Hermione Lee, John Stubbs and Sara Wheeler

2006    Carolyn Steel Hungry City, Chatto (£10k)

            Sarah Irving Natural Science and the Origins of British
            Empire, Pickering & Chatto (£5k)

            Sarah Irving Natural Science and the Origins of British
           Empire, Pickering & Chatto (£5k)
           Thomas Wright Oscar's Books, Chatto (£5k)

Judges: Roland Chambers, Moris Farhi and Hilary Spurling

2005    Alice Albinia Empires of the Indus, John Murray (£12,500)

            Christopher Turner Adventures in the Orgasmatron, 
            Fourth Estate (£10k)

            Druin Birch Digging Up the Dead, Chatto (£5k)
            Matthew Green The Wizard of the Nile, Portobello
            (£5k)

Judges: Brenda Maddox, Peter Parker and Matthew Parris

2004    Jim Endersby A Guinea Pig's History of Biology, Heinemann (£10K)

            Roland Chambers A Last Englishman - The Double
             Life of Arthur Ransome, Faber (£5k)
             John Stubbs Donne -the Reformed Soul, Viking (£5k)

Judges: Michael Holroyd, Libby Purves and D.J. Taylor