Walter Scott Prize

This article is about the award announced at the Borders Book Festival in Scotland. For the unrelated bookstore chain, see Borders (retailer).

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is a British literary award founded in 2010.^[1] At £25,000, it is one of the largest literary awards in the UK.^[2] The award was created by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, who is generally considered the originator of historical fiction with the novel Waverley in 1814.^[3]

Eligible books must have been first published in the UK, Ireland or Commonwealth in the preceding year.^[1] For the purpose of the award, historical fiction is defined as being that where the main events take place more than 60 years ago, i.e. outside of any mature personal experience of the author.^[1][a] The winner is announced each June at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose.^[1]

Recipients

Year	Author	Title	Story and setting	Result	Ref.
2010	Hilary Mantel	Wolf Hall	Thomas Cromwell (1490s–1532)	Winner	[4][5][6]
	Adam Thorpe	Hodd	Robin Hood (early medieval)	Shortlist	[7][8]
	Robert Harris	Lustrum	Cicero (106–43 BC)
	Sarah Dunant	Sacred Hearts	16th-century Italian convent
	Iain Pears	Stone's Fall	Early 20th-century mystery/thriller
	Simon Mawer	The Glass Room	1930s Czech
	Adam Foulds	The Quickening Maze	John Clare and Alfred Tennyson (early 19th century)
2011	Andrea Levy	The Long Song	1820s Jamaica	Winner	[9][10]
	Tom McCarthy	C	Turn of the 20th-century Europe	Shortlist	[5]
	Joseph O'Connor	Ghost Light	20th-century England and Ireland
	C. J. Sansom	Heartstone	England during the summer of 1545
	David Mitchell	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet	late 18th-century Shogun Japan
	Andrew Williams	To Kill a Tsar	St. Petersburg around the turn of the 20th century
2012	Sebastian Barry	On Canaan's Side	20th-century Ireland and Chicago	Winner	[11][12]
	Esi Edugyan	Half-Blood Blues	World War II-era Europe	Shortlist	[10][13]
	Andrew Miller	Pure	Paris in 1786
	Barry Unsworth	The Quality of Mercy	London of 1767 and a Durham coastal mining village
	Patrick deWitt	The Sisters Brothers	Oregon and California in 1851
	Alan Hollinghurst	The Stranger's Child	World War I-era Europe
2013	Tan Twan Eng	The Garden of Evening Mists	1940s and '50s Malaya	Winner	[14][15]
	Hilary Mantel	Bring Up the Bodies	Thomas Cromwell (1532–1536)	Shortlist	[16]
	Rose Tremain	Merivel: A Man of His Time	1680s England
	Thomas Keneally	The Daughters of Mars	WWI
	Anthony Quinn	The Streets	1880s London
	Pat Barker	Toby's Room	WWI
2014	Robert Harris	An Officer and a Spy	Dreyfus Affair, which took place in France in the late 1890s	Winner	[17][18]
	Andrew Greig	Fair Helen	1590s in the Borderland of Scotland and England	Shortlist	[19][20]
	Jim Crace	Harvest	remote English village following the Enclosure Act in the 18th century
	Kate Atkinson	Life After Life	during the 20th century
	Eleanor Catton	The Luminaries	New Zealand gold rush of the 19th century
	Ann Weisgarber	The Promise	1900 Galveston hurricane
2015	John Spurling	The Ten Thousand Things	China in the 14th century	Winner	[21][22]
	Kamila Shamsie	A God in Every Stone	India during WWI	Shortlist	[23][24]
	Damon Galgut	Arctic Summer	India in the early 20th century
	Adam Foulds	In the Wolf's Mouth	Italy in World War II
	Helen Dunmore	The Lie	England during WWI
	Martin Amis	The Zone of Interest	Europe during World War II
	Hermione Eyre	Viper Wine	England in the 17th century
2016	Simon Mawer	Tightrope	France WWII	Winner	[25][26]
	Patrick Gale	A Place Called Winter	early 20th century Saskatchewan	Shortlist	[27][28]
	Allan Massie	End Games in Bordeaux	France WWII
	Gavin McCrea	Mrs Engels	19th century England
	Lucy Treloar	Salt Creek	mid-19th century Australia
	William Boyd	Sweet Caress	20th century global
2017	Sebastian Barry	Days Without End	US Civil War	Winner	[29][30]
	Jo Baker	A Country Road, a Tree	WWII France	Shortlist	[31][32]
	Francis Spufford	Golden Hill	18th century New York
	Graham Swift	Mothering Sunday	1924
	Hannah Kent	The Good People	19th century Ireland
	Rose Tremain	The Gustav Sonata	Switzerland during WWII
	Charlotte Hobson	The Vanishing Futurist	Russia early Soviet era
2018	Ben Myers	The Gallows Pole	Yorkshire 18th century	Winner	[33][34]
	Paul Lynch	Grace	19th century Ireland	Shortlist	[35][36]
	Jennifer Egan	Manhattan Beach	WWII New York
	Rachel Malik	Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves	WWII
	Jane Harris	Sugar Money	18th century Martinique and Grenada
	Patrick McGrath	The Wardrobe Mistress	1940s London
2019	Robin Robertson	The Long Take	American, post WWII	Winner	[37]
	Peter Carey	A Long Way From Home	1950s Australia	Shortlist	[38][39]
	Cressida Connolly	After the Party	1938 England
	Andrew Miller	Now We Shall Be Entirely Free	1809 Spain
	Samantha Harvey	The Western Wind	1491
	Michael Ondaatje	Warlight	1945 London
2020	Christine Dwyer Hickey	The Narrow Land	1950s, Cape Cod	Winner	[40][41][42]
	Marguerite Poland	A Sin of Omission	late 19th century, South Africa and England	Shortlist	[43][44]
	Joseph O'Connor	Shadowplay	1878, London
	Isabella Hammad	The Parisian	pre-WWI, Europe, Palestine
	Tim Pears	The Redeemed	WWI, West Country, England
	James Meek	To Calais, in Ordinary Time	14th century, England
2021	Hilary Mantel	The Mirror & the Light	Thomas Cromwell (1536–1540)	Winner	[45][46]
	Kate Grenville	A Room Made of Leaves	early colonial period, Australia	Shortlist	[47][48]
	Maggie O'Farrell	Hamnet	late 16th century, Stratford-upon-Avon
	Pip Williams	The Dictionary of Lost Words	1880s–1920s, Oxford
	Steven Conte	The Tolstoy Estate	1812 and 1941, Russia
2022	James Robertson	News of the Dead	Fictitious Highland glen through three different eras	Winner	[49]
	Andrew Greig	Rose Nicholson	Scotland of the 1570s	Shortlist	[50]
	Amanda Smyth	Fortune	Caribbean oil rush of the 1920s
	Colm Tóibín	The Magician	Twentieth-century Europe, seen though the life of Thomas Mann
2023	Lucy Caldwell	These Days	Northern Ireland, Belfast Blitz 1940s	Winner	[51][52]
	Adrian Duncan	The Geometer Lobochevsky	Rural Ireland 1800s	Shortlist	[53]
	Robert Harris	Act of Oblivion	England 17th century
	Elizabeth Lowry	The Chosen	England, Thomas Hardy 1800s
	Fiona McFarlane	The Sun Walks Down	South Australia 1800s
	Simon Mawer	Ancestry	Crimea and England 1850s
	Devika Ponnambalam	I Am Not Your Eve	Tahiti, Paul Gauguin 1800s
2024	Kevin Jared Hosein	Hungry Ghosts	Harrowing epic set in 1940s Trinidad	Winner	[54]
	Tom Crewe	The New Life	Gay community in 1890s London	Shortlist	[55]
	Joseph O'Connor	My Father's House	Jews and POWs escape from the Gestapo in WWII Rome
	Kai Thomas	In the Upper Country	Underground Railroad refugees resettle in 1800s Ontario, Canada
	Rose Tremain	Absolutely and Forever	Broken relationships in 1960s London and Paris
	Tan Twan Eng	The House of Doors	Murder mystery and end of colonialism in early 20th C Penang, Malaysia
2025	Andrew Miller	The Land in Winter	Britain during the Big Freeze of 1962-3	Winner	[56]
	Kevin Barry	The Heart in Winter	Mining community in 1890s Montana	Shortlist	[57]
	Angharad Hampshire	The Mare	The later life of Nazi war criminal Hermine Braunsteiner
	Francesca Kay	The Book of Days	Britain at the end of the reign of Henry VIII
	Ferdia Lennon	Glorious Exploits	Sicily during the Peloponnesian War
	Yael van der Wouden	The Safekeep	Rural Holland in the early 1960s

Notes

1. Scott subtitled his first historical novel “Waverley; or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since.”