Somerset Maugham Award

2020

• Alex Allison for The Art of the Body (Dialogue Books/Little, Brown)
• Oliver Soden for Michael Tippett: The Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicholson/Orion)
• Roseanne Watt for Moder Dy (Birlinn/Polygon)
• Amrou Al-Kadhi for Unicorn (4^th Estate)

2019

• Raymond Antrobus for The Perseverance
• Damian Le Bas for The Stopping Places
• Phoebe Power for Shrines of Upper Austria
• Nell Stevens for Mrs Gaskell and Me

2018

• Kayo Chingonyi for Kumukanda
• Fiona Mozley for Elmet
• Miriam Nash for All the Prayers in the House

2017

• Edmund Gordon for The Invention of Angela Carter
• Melissa Lee-Houghton for Sunshine
• Martin MacInnes for Infinite Ground

2016

• Jessie Greengrass for An Account Of The Decline Of The Great Auk, According To One Who Saw It
• Daisy Hay for Mr & Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance
• Andrew McMillan for Physical
• Thomas Morris for We Don't Know What We're Doing
• Jack Underwood for Happiness

2015

• Jonathan Beckman for How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne
• Liz Berry for Black Country
• Ben Brooks for Lolito
• Zoe Pilger for Eat My Heart Out

2014

• Nadifa Mohamed for The Orchard of Lost Souls
• Daisy Hildyard for Hunters in the Snow Grass
• Amy Sackville for Orkney

2013

• Ned Beauman for The Teleportation Accident
• Abi Curtis for The Glass Delusion
• Joe Stretch for The Adult
• Lucy Wood for Diving Belles

2012

• No Award

2011

• Miriam Gamble for The Squirrels Are Dead
• Alexandra Harris for Romantic Moderns
• Adam O’Riordan for In the Flesh

2010

• Jacob Polley for Talk of the Town
• Helen Oyeyemi for White is for Witching
• Ben Wilson for What Price Liberty?

2009

• Adam Foulds for The Broken Word
• Alice Albinia for Empires of the Indus
• Rodge Glass for Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography
• Henry Hitchings for The Secret Life of Words
• Thomas Leveritt for The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money
• Helen Walsh for Once Upon a Time in England

2008

• Steven Hall for The Raw Shark Texts
• Nick Laird for On Purpose
• Gwendoline Riley for Joshua Spassky
• Adam Thirlwell for Miss Herbert (US title: The Delighted States)

2007

• Horatio Clare for Running For The Hills
• James Scudamore for The Amnesia Clinic

2006

• Chris Cleave for Incendiary
• Zadie Smith for On Beauty
• Owen Sheers for Skirrid Hill

2005

• Justin Hill for Passing Under Heaven
• Maggie O'Farrell for The Distance Between Us

2004

• Charlotte Mendelson for Daughters of Jerusalem
• Mark Blayney for Two Kinds of Silence
• Robert Macfarlane for Mountains of the Mind

2003

• William Fiennes for The Snow Geese
• Hari Kunzru for The Impressionist
• Jon McGregor for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

2002

• Charlotte Hobson for Black Earth City
• Marcel Theroux for The Paperchase

2001

• Edward Platt for Leadville
• Ben Rice for Pobby and Dingan

2000

• Bella Bathurst for The Lighthouse Stevensons
• Sarah Waters for Affinity

1999

• Andrea Ashworth for Once in a House on Fire
• Paul Farley for The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You
• Giles Foden for The Last King of Scotland
• Jonathan Freedland for Bring Home the Revolution

1998

• Rachel Cusk for The Country Life
• Jonathan Rendall for This Bloody Mary Is the Last Thing I Own
• Kate Summerscale for The Queen of Whale Cay
• Robert Twigger for Angry White Pyjamas

1997

• Rhidian Brook for The Testimony of Taliesin Jones
• Kate Clanchy for Slattern
• Philip Hensher for Kitchen Venom
• Francis Spufford for I May Be Some Time

1996

• Katherine Pierpoint for Truffle Beds
• Alan Warner for Morvern Callar

1995

• Patrick French for Younghusband
• Simon Garfield for The End of Innocence
• Kathleen Jamie for The Queen of Sheba
• Laura Thompson for The Dogs

1994

• Jackie Kay for Other Lovers
• A. L. Kennedy for Looking For the Possible Dance
• Philip Marsden for Crossing Place

1993

• Dea Birkett for Jella
• Duncan McLean for Bucket of Tongues
• Glyn Maxwell for Out of the Rain

1992

• Geoff Dyer for But Beautiful
• Lawrence Norfolk for Lemprière's Dictionary
• Gerard Woodward for Householder

1991

• Peter Benson for The Other Occupant
• Lesley Glaister for Honour Thy Father
• Helen Simpson for Four Bare Legs in a Bed

1990

• Mark Hudson for Our Grandmothers' Drums
• Sam North for The Automatic Man
• Nicholas Shakespeare for The Vision of Elena Silves

1989

• Rupert Christiansen for Romantic Affinities
• Alan Hollinghurst for The Swimming Pool Library
• Deirdre Madden for The Birds of the Innocent Wood

1988

• Jimmy Burns for The Land That Lost Its Heroes
• Carol Ann Duffy for Selling Manhattan
• Matthew Kneale for Whore Banquets

1987

• Stephen Gregory for The Cormorant
• Janni Howker for Isaac Campion
• Andrew Motion for The Lamberts

1986

• Patricia Ferguson for Family Myths and Legends
• Adam Nicolson for Frontiers
• Tim Parks for Tongues of Flame

1985

• Blake Morrison for Dark Glasses
• Jeremy Reed for By the Fisheries
• Jane Rogers for Her Living Image

1984

• Peter Ackroyd for The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
• Timothy Garton Ash for The Polish Revolution: Solidarity
• Sean O'Brien for The Indoor Park

1983

• Lisa St Aubin de Teran for Keepers of the House

1982

• William Boyd for A Good Man in Africa
• Adam Mars-Jones for Lantern Lecture

1981

• Julian Barnes for Metroland
• Clive Sinclair for Hearts of Gold
• A. N. Wilson for The Healing Art

1980

• Max Hastings for Bomber Command
• Christopher Reid for Arcadia
• Humphrey Carpenter for The Inklings

1979

• Helen Hodgman for Jack & Jill
• Sara Maitland for Daughter of Jerusalem

1978

• Tom Paulin for A State of Justice
• Nigel Williams for My Life Closed Twice

1977

• Richard Holmes for Shelley: The Pursuit

1976

• Dominic Cooper for The Dead of Winter
• Ian McEwan for First Love, Last Rites

1975

• No Award

1974

• Martin Amis for The Rachel Papers

1973

• Peter Prince for Play Things
• Paul Strathern for A Season in Abyssinia
• Jonathan Street for Prudence Dictates

1972

• Douglas Dunn for Terry Street
• Gillian Tindall for Fly Away Home

1971

• Susan Hill for I'm the King of the Castle
• Richard Barber for The Knight and Chivalry
• Michael Hastings for Tussy Is Me

1970

• Jane Gaskell for A Sweet Sweet Summer
• Piers Paul Read for Monk Dawson

1969

• Angela Carter for Several Perceptions

1968

• Paul Bailey for At The Jerusalem
• Seamus Heaney for Death of a Naturalist

1967

• B. S. Johnson for Trawl
• Andrew Sinclair for The Better Half

1966

• Michael Frayn for The Tin Men
• Julian Mitchell for The White Father

1965

• Peter Everett for Negatives

1964

• Dan Jacobson for Time of Arrival
• John le Carré for The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

1963

• David Storey for Flight Into Camden

1962

• Hugh Thomas for The Spanish Civil War

1961

• V. S. Naipaul for Miguel Street

1960

• Ted Hughes for The Hawk in the Rain

1959

• Thom Gunn for A Sense Of Movement

1958

• John Wain for Preliminary Essays

1957

• George Lamming for In the Castle of My Skin

1956

• Elizabeth Jennings for A Way of Looking

1955

• Kingsley Amis for Lucky Jim

1954

• Doris Lessing for Five Short Novels

1953

• Emyr Humphreys for Hear and Forgive

1952

• Francis King for The Dividing Stream

1951

• Roland Camberton for Scamp

1950

• Nigel Kneale for Tomato Cain & Other Stories

1949

• Hamish Henderson for Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica

1948

• P. H. Newby for Journey to the Interior

1947

• A. L. Barker for Innocents