ANNE APPLEBAUM, LYSE DOUCET, ELIGA GOULD AND SUJIT SIVASUNDARAM JOIN PETER FRANKOPAN AS JURORS FOR THE 2020 CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE

The Cundill History Prize is steering through one of the most challenging moments in recent world history with an exceptional international jury of prize-winning historians and journalists.

Announcing the 2020 panel, Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University, said: “The function of the Cundill History Prize to champion the world’s best history writing as a way to better understand the present and to start mapping a future is perhaps more important than ever right now.”

The Oxford Professor of Global History, Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads), 2020 Chair of the Jury, will be joined by:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning American-Polish historian Anne Applebaum, senior fellow at John Hopkins University, staff writer at the The Atlantic, and author of Red Famine; the Cundill History Prize-winning Iron Curtain; and Gulag: A History
• Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for the BBC, the Canadian Lyse Doucet OBE C.M., who played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the “Arab Spring” and has been posted in Jerusalem, Amman, Tehran, Islamabad, Kabul and Abidjan
• Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire, Eliga Gould, a Jamestown Prize winner and George Washington Book Prize finalist, whose extensive work on the American Revolution emphasises the entangled history Americans shared with the rest of the world; and
• British-Sri Lankan historian Sujit Sivasundaram, Professor of World History at Cambridge University and Director of the university’s Centre of South Asian Studies, recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize for History, and author of numerous books, including the forthcoming Waves Across the South.

Administered by McGill University, the Cundill History Prize rewards the best history writing in English. US$75,000 are awarded to the winner, making the the prize the biggest purse for a work of non-fiction in English, with US$10,000 going to each of the two runners up.

The leading international prize for history writing has faced the challenges of recent months head-on: adapting to the new environment and working closely with publishers around the word, the prize received over 300 digital-only submissions by its May 1 deadline. The jurors will shortly be sent pre-loaded e-readers to facilitate the reading period over the summer months, before they will hold their first meeting, via videoconference, to decide the 2020 shortlist, to be announced in mid-September.

Anne Applebaum said: “There has never been a moment when good history — fact-based, well-researched, but also well-written — has been so necessary. It is so easy now to turn the past into myth; great history books can prevent that from happening.”

Lyse Doucet said: “Now, more than ever, as we ponder an uncertain future, we need to delve into what’s gone before, been thought and done before. To be a juror for the 2020 Cundill History Prize is to be given a key which unlocks other worlds – the landscapes inhabited by the best scholars and students of history alike. I hope to discover authors and books which bring the past to life through storytelling as real and urgent as our own time. I want to be drawn into writing where characters lift from the pages and powerful turns of phrase spark insights and ideas. I want a ringing affirmation of how much history matters.”

Eliga Gould said: “Getting to select the winners for an award like the Cundill History Prize is a chance to read today’s very best history. That’s enormously exciting. Good history builds on and broadens what other historians have already said, but it does so in ways that are accessible to the reading public. Accessibility is really, really important. Because history is the story of complicated people and diverse, complex societies, the best history always surprises. It forces us out of our comfort zone, no matter where that comfort zone is — left, right, or center. That’s why history is so vital for civic health.”

Sujit Sivasundaram said: “One thing we need in order to find a way out of the fatigue and toll of the pandemic is brilliant, surprising and creative historical writing. This is the kind of writing that can distract as well as resonate, that brings past worlds to view in vivid detail and which shows the deep roots of our present. Our task will not be easy but I’m sure we will find these qualities in rich measure. 2020’s historical writing seems yet more dynamic than before in engaging with a rich set of issues from environmental change to decolonisation and globalisation. It looks at the past from a diverse set of vantage points. I relish the prospect of this marathon of reading — what better for a period of social-distancing?”

Peter Frankopan said: “This has been an extraordinary year for history writing, with some truly exceptional books that have changed how we look at the past. As we’ve all been learning during lockdown, making sense of the world around us has never been more important. I’m very excited by the outstanding panel that have agreed to judge the Cundill Prize this year – and to working with them to find the voices and ideas that have shown again why the study of history is so important.”

The shortlist announcement in September — originally scheduled for New York, following last year’s high-profile event in the city — will be delivered as a virtual event. Details of the finalists announcement in October — planned as a physical event at Frankfurt Book Fair — will be announced in due course.

The Cundill History Prize Gala and winner announcement is scheduled to take place in Montreal on November 19, with the Cundill History Prize Lecture to be given at McGill by the 2019 winner, Julia Lovell, on November 18.

Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University, said: “With geographical areas of expertise and interests that span the globe, and a wealth of achievements, prizes and distinctions between them, this is a truly globally-minded, stand-out panel. We are delighted to have these five jurors onboard as the Cundill History Prize works to be a force for good at a very fractured, uncertain moment in time.”

Last year, the prize was won by Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London, for Maoism: A Global History. The two runners up were Professor of German History at University College London Mary Fulbrook, for Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice, and Harvard Professor and The New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore, for These Truths: A History of the United States.

For further information, and to join the conversation, please visit: cundillprize.com | twitter.com/cundillprize | facebook.com/cundillprizemcgill

For all media enquiries please contact Fiona McMorrough and Daniel Kramb at FMcM Associates on 0207 405 7422 or, fionam@fmcm.co.uk, danielk@fmcm.co.uk