The Whitfield Book Prize is a prize of £1,000 awarded annually by the Royal Historical Society to the best work on a subject of British or Irish history published within the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland during the calendar year. To be eligible for the award, the book must be the first history work published by the author.
History of the prize
The prize was founded in 1976 out of the bequest of Archibald Stenton Whitfield. Originally, the prize was £400; five years later, it was increased to £600. Currently, the prize is £1,000.
Winners and shortlisted writers
Source: Royal Historical Society
Ireland and the Great War, written by Niamh Gallagher, became the first book about Irish history to win the prize in 2020.
1970s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | K. D. Brown | John Burns | Winner | |
| 1978 | Marie Axton | The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession | Winner | |
| 1979 | Patricia Crawford | Denzil Holles, 1598–1680: A study of his Political Career | Winner |
1980s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | D. L. Rydz | The Parliamentary Agents: A History | Winner | |
| 1981 | Scott M. Harrison | The Pilgrimage of Grace in the Lake Counties, 1536–7 | Winner | |
| 1982 | Norman L. Jones | Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 | Winner | |
| 1983 | Peter Clark | The English Alehouse: A social history, 1200–1830 | Winner | |
| 1984 | David Hempton | Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 | Winner | |
| 1985 | K. D. M. Snell | Annals of the Labouring Poor | Winner | |
| 1986 | Diarmaid MacCulloch | Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500–1600 | Winner | |
| 1987 | Kevin M. Sharpe | Criticism and Compliment: The politics of literature in the England of Charles I | Winner | |
| 1988 | J. H. Davis | Reforming London, the London Government Problem, 1855–1900 | Winner | |
| 1989 | A. G. Rosser | Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540 | Winner |
1990s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Duncan M. Tanner | Political change and the Labour party, 1900–1918 | Winner | |
| 1991 | Tessa Watt | Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 | Winner | |
| 1992 | Christine Carpenter | Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401 -1499 | Winner | |
| 1993 | Jeanette M. Neeson | Commoners: common right; enclosure and social change in England, 1700- 1820 | Winner | |
| 1994 | Vic Gatrell | The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English people, 1770–1868 | Winner | |
| 1995 | Kathleen Wilson | The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 | Winner | |
| 1996 | Paul D. Griffiths | Youth and Authority Formative Experience in England, 1560–1640 | Winner | |
| 1997 | Christopher Tolley | Domestic Biography: the legacy of evangelicalism in four nineteenth-century families | Winner | |
| 1998 | Amanda Vickery | The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England | Winner | |
| 1999 | John Walter | Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers | Winner |
2000s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Adam Fox | Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 | Winner | |
| 2001 | John Goodall | God's House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth Century Almshouse | Winner | |
| Frank Salmon | Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture | Winner | ||
| 2002 | Ethan H. Shagan | Popular Politics and the English Reformation | Winner | |
| 2003 | Christine Peters | Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England | Winner | |
| 2004 | M.J.D. Roberts | Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral reform in England, 1787–1886 | Winner | |
| 2005 | Matt Houlbrook | Queer London | Winner | |
| 2006 | Kate Fisher | Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918–1960 | Winner | |
| 2007 | Stephen Baxter | The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England | Winner | |
| Duncan Bell | The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 | Winner | ||
| 2008 | Stephen M. Lee | George Canning and Liberal Toryism, 1801–1827 | Winner | |
| Frank Trentmann | Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain | Winner | ||
| 2009 | Nicholas Draper | The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery | Winner |
2010s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Arnold Hunt | The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 | Winner | |
| 2011 | Jacqueline Rose | Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 | Winner | |
| 2012 | Ben Griffin | The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain: Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women's Rights | Winner | |
| 2013 | Scott Sowerby | Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution | Winner | |
| 2014 | Dating changed from "year published" to "year of award" | |||
| 2015 | John Sabapathy | Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 | Winner | |
| 2016 | Aysha Pollnitz | Princely Education in Early Modern Britain | Winner | |
| 2017 | William M. Cavert | The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City | Winner | |
| Alice Taylor | The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 | Winner | ||
| 2018 | Brian N. Hall | Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914-1918 | Winner | |
| 2019 | Ryan Hanley | Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 | Winner |
2020s
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Niamh Gallagher | Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History | Winner | |
| Kieran Connell | Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain | Shortlist | ||
| Johanna Dale | Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire | Shortlist | ||
| Frances Houghton | The Veterans’ Tale. British Military Memoirs of the Second World War | Shortlist | ||
| Charlie Laderman | Sharing the Burden. The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order | Shortlist | ||
| Rob Waters | Thinking Black: Britain, 1964–1985 | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | Jackson Armstrong | England's Northern Frontier: Conflict and Local Society in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches | Winner | |
| Lauren Working | The Making of an Imperial Polity. Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis | Winner | ||
| Henry Bainton | History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins | Shortlist | ||
| Sarah Goldsmith | Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour | Shortlist | ||
| Thomas Leahy | The Intelligence War against the IRA | Shortlist | ||
| Fionnuala Walsh | Irish Women and the Great War | Shortlist | ||
| 2022 | Kristen D. Hussey | Imperial Bodies in London. Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 | Winner | |
| Emily Baughan | Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire | Shortlist | ||
| Laura Carter | Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 | Shortlist | ||
| Tracy Collins | Female Monasticism in Medieval Ireland: An Archaeology | Shortlist | ||
| Harriet Lyon | Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England | Shortlist | ||
| Sherra Murphy | ‘The First National Museum’: Dublin's Natural History Museum in the Mid-Nineteenth Century | Shortlist | ||
| 2023 | Síobhra Aiken | Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War | Winner | |
| James D. Fisher | The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 | Shortlist | ||
| Sarah Fox | Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England | Shortlist | ||
| Kate Gibson | Illegitimacy, Family, and Stigma in England, 1660-1834 | Shortlist | ||
| Bronagh Ann McShane | Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700 | Shortlist | ||
| Jonathan R. Topham | Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age | Shortlist | ||
| 2024 | To be announced July 2024 | Winner |
See also
Notes
- Gallagher published the first ever work on Irish history to win the Whitfield Book prize
References
- "Whitfield Prize". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
- "Whitfield Prize". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 33: 233. 1983. doi:10.1017/s0080440100015681.
- "Niamh Gallagher's Ireland and the Great War wins the Royal Historical Society's 2020 Whitfield Prize | Faculty of History University of Cambridge". www.hist.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2024.
- ^ royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – The 2020 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
- ^ royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – the 2021 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
- ^ royalhistsoc. "RHS Whitfield Book Prize – the 2022 Shortlist | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
- ^ royalhistsoc. "RHS WHITFIELD BOOK PRIZE – THE 2023 SHORTLIST | Historical Transactions". Retrieved 15 June 2024.
- "Whitfield Book Prize | RHS". royalhistsoc.org. Retrieved 15 June 2024.