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Duff Cooper Prize
@duffcooperprize.bsky.social
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A £5,000 annual prize for non-fiction, celebrating imaginative insight, compelling narrative, scholarship & good writing since 1956. Next awarded 2 March 26.
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Calling all UK publishers of great non-fiction 📚. Tell our judges about the best books you're bringing out this year. Nominations for the 70th #duffcooperprize 🎉 now open until 1 June 2025. Details here: duffcooperprize.org/about/how-to...
May 19, 2025 at 2:07 PM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Congratulations to Sue Prideaux winner of The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 for Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, published by @faberbooks.bsky.social. 🍾
Winner of The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, Sue Prideaux, holds her winning book Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
March 3, 2025 at 8:16 PM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
We’ve spent six weeks celebrating the best non-fiction books from the past year. On Monday night we will toast them all and learn the winner of The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025. (@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social)
duffcooperprize.org
The six books shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025: Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy Mark Gilbert (Allen Lane) Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World Kathryn Hughes (Fourth Estate) The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Fourth Estate) Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations 1400-1750 Noel Malcolm (OUP) Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin Sue Prideaux (Faber) Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion Michael Taylor (Bodley Head)
March 2, 2025 at 10:17 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Michael Taylor (mhtaylor.bsky.social) discusses writing, dinosaurs, Impossible Monsters (The Bodley Head) and the history of ideas. Read the interview on our website. duffcooperprize.org/conversation...
Quote card reading: All these men (and they were almost exclusively men) knew each other on a first-name basis; they walked and dined and lived together; and it was the strength or weakness of their relationships which often determined how well their ideas were received. Michael Taylor in conversation. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize
February 28, 2025 at 9:19 AM
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'Michael Taylor shows, with elegance, fluency and scholarship, the "dinosaur wars" of the nineteenth century made and unmade reputations, and were fought at once with high principles and low cunning.'
The Duff Cooper Prize judge David Horspool
@mhtaylor.bsky.social
Image of a book Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor. Alongside text reading: ‘Impossible Monsters vividly recaptures a vital time when men and women, gifted amateurs and diligent professionals addressed fundamental questions. As Michael Taylor shows, with elegance, fluency and scholarship, the "dinosaur wars" of the nineteenth century made and unmade reputations, and were fought at once with high principles and low cunning.’ The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize judge David Horspool
February 28, 2025 at 9:14 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’ve profiled a shortlisted book. In our final week, discover Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor (The Bodley Head) @vintagebooks.bsky.social 🧵
Book on a table with caption: The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 Shortlist. The book is Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor
February 28, 2025 at 9:10 AM
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Sue Prideaux discusses writing, Wild Thing (@faberbooks.bsky.social) and what surprised her when researching Paul Gauguin. Read the interview on our website. duffcooperprize.org/conversation...
'When the National Gallery held a Gauguin show... all hell broke loose. There were calls for him to be cancelled and his paintings burned. I wanted to find out as much as I could about him. What I found became the book,’ Sue Prideaux in Coversation. Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize.
February 21, 2025 at 9:39 AM
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‘In recent years, Paul Gauguin's paintings have been dismissed as a colonialist and exploitative view of exotic people in a lush landscape. Sue Prideaux's Wild Thing brings to light a far more complex picture,’
The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize chair, Artemis Cooper
@faberbooks.bsky.social
Image of a book Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. Alongside text reading: ‘In recent years, Paul Gauguin's paintings have been dismissed as a colonialist and exploitative view of exotic people in a lush landscape. Sue Prideaux's Wild Thing brings to light a far more complex picture, of a man who struggled all his life - whether in Paris, Pont-Aven or Tahiti - to evoke his experience of being alive.’ The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize chair Artemis Cooper
February 21, 2025 at 9:33 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’re profiling a shortlisted book. This week we dive into Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux (@faberbooks.bsky.social). 🧵
@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social
February 21, 2025 at 9:28 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
‘There is a web of love-stories in this book: complicated relationships involving sex, political advantage and money, but also tender loving-kindness and profound affection.’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett discussing THE SCAPEGOAT, read the interview on our website:
duffcooperprize.org/conversation...
‘There is a web of love-stories in this book: complicated relationships involving sex, political advantage and money, but also tender loving-kindness and profound affection.’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett discussing THE SCAPEGOAT
February 14, 2025 at 10:26 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
‘Lucy Hughes-Hallett's book makes us look again at the Duke of Buckingham... with as much brilliance and dazzle as Buckingham himself, while mining her material with care and originality.’
Duff Cooper Prize judge, David Horspool, on THE SCAPEGOAT: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
‘Lucy Hughes-Hallett's book makes us look again at the Duke of Buckingham, favourite to two kings, allowing us to see him as he saw himself -- a "benign impresario" rather than a "despoiler of kingdoms". She does so with as much brilliance and dazzle as Buckingham himself, while mining her material with care and originality.’ @DuffCooperPrize judge, David Horspool, on THE SCAPEGOAT: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
February 14, 2025 at 10:19 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’re profiling a different shortlisted book. This week we’re raising a glass to THE SCAPEGOAT: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (@4thestatebooks.bsky.social) 🧵
@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social
Book on a table with caption: The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 Shortlist. The book is THE SCAPEGOAT: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
February 14, 2025 at 10:16 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
‘The biggest surprise, I suppose, was the discovery that most of what had been written on this subject (with a few shining exceptions) was wrong’. Noel Malcolm discussing his work. Read the interview on our website:
duffcooperprize.org/conversation...
A card with written text: ‘The biggest surprise, I suppose, was the discovery that most of what had been written on this subject (with a few shining exceptions) was wrong’. Noel Malcolm in conversation. Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize
February 7, 2025 at 10:01 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
'A brilliant piece of scholarship, applying for the first time a genuinely historical frame to same sex behaviour in the past. It is forensic, but utterly engrossing.'
@DuffCooperPrize judge, Miles Young, on Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe. @newcollegeoxf.bsky.social
February 7, 2025 at 9:59 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’re profiling a different shortlisted book. This week we’re celebrating Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-male sexual relations 1400 – 1750 by Noel Malcolm (Oxford University Press). 🧵
@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social
Book on a table with caption: The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 Shortlist. The book is Early Modern Europe: Male-male sexual relations 1400 - 1750
February 7, 2025 at 9:37 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
'The sheer weirdness of so much of the cat life was a revelation. What about the heiress Kate Strong who turns up to a grand Vanderbilt ball wearing a dress made up of cat fur?’

Kathryn Hughes discussing her work. Read the interview on our website: duffcooperprize.org/conversation...
Quotation repeated in text post.
January 31, 2025 at 9:44 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
'How did the domestic cat go from being a half-feral waif to a voluptuously glossy pet on its cushion by the drawing-room fire? ... Kathryn Hughes writes about the emergence of the modern from a completely unexpected angle.'
Chair of Judges, Artemis Cooper on Catland
Image of book: Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes. Plus quotation repeated in the post.
January 31, 2025 at 9:43 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’re profiling a different shortlisted book. This week we’re celebrating Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes (@4thestatebooks.bsky.social). 🧵
@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social
Book on a table. The book is Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes. There is text reading, The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025 shortlist.
January 31, 2025 at 9:39 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Mark Gilbert discussing his work. Read the full interview on our website:
duffcooperprize.org/q-and-a/mark...
“Italy has been a mostly successful democracy, despite its obvious flaws, though that is not how it is perceived by the British, or the Americans (those in glass houses….).”
January 24, 2025 at 11:25 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 Judge Minoo Dinshaw
on Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy by Mark Gilbert (Allen Lane).
Text: “I found it such an unexpected, important clear argument, explaining Italy’s wartime trauma and relative post war resilience, and introducing us to de Gasperi as a hero of compromise”
January 24, 2025 at 11:24 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
To celebrate The Pol Roger Duff Cooper 2025, each Friday we’re profiling a different shortlisted book. We’re kicking off with, Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy by Mark Gilbert published (Allen Lane).
January 24, 2025 at 10:37 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Thank you to our judges, Artemis Cooper, Minoo Dinshaw, Susan Brigden, David Horspool & Miles Young (Warden of
@newcollegeoxf.bsky.social )

The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize is generously supported by Champagne Pol Roger and run by The Duff Cooper Memorial Fund, based at New College, Oxford.
Card showing text: The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize “The shortlist this year is truly exceptional. In each case the author has shown not just deep knowledge of their subject, but the audacity to be different: to make startling connections and reveal the unexpected. We are delighted to celebrate these books because they will be read for decades - each one being a benchmark in its field.” Artemis Cooper, Chair of the Jury
January 23, 2025 at 10:06 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Congratulations!
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science & Religion
Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social (The Bodley Head)
is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025

@caiuscollege.bsky.social
@liveright.bsky.social @royalhistsoc.bsky.social
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War between Science & Religion Michael Taylor (Bodley Head) is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
January 23, 2025 at 10:03 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Congratulations!
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
Sue Prideaux (Faber @faberbooks.bsky.social)
is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin Sue Prideaux (Faber) is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
January 23, 2025 at 9:58 AM
duffcooperprize.bsky.social
Congratulations!
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-male sexual relations 1400-1750
Noel Malcolm (OUP)
is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-male sexual relations 1400-1750 Noel Malcolm (OUP) is shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
January 23, 2025 at 9:56 AM