David Cannadine

David Cannadine (Chair of the judges) is widely regarded as one of the most influential British historians of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His work spans the evolution of Britain’s social, political, and cultural life, with a particular focus on how memory, ceremony, class, and empire shape national identity.

Cannadine is an historian who has written on modern Britain, the United States, the British Empire and the wider world, and is a trustee of the Wolfson Foundation. He is Dodge Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton University, a Visiting Professor of History at the University of Oxford, the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and served as President of the British Academy from 2017 to 2021. He has previously taught at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, New York. He was Director and Professor of History at the Institute of Historical Research from 1998 to 2003. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society, and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009 he was awarded a knighthood for services to scholarship. His publications include Queen Elizabeth II: A Concise Biography of an Exceptional Sovereign (2025), Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (2017), Margaret Thatcher: A Life And Legacy (2017), The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond our Differences (2012), Mellon: An American Life (2006), Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2001), Class in Britain (1998), and The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990). He has served on many cultural organisations concerned with heritage and the arts, including the National Portrait Gallery, English Heritage, Westminster Abbey, the Victorian Society, Royal Academy Trust, and the Birmingham and Midland Institute. He currently serves on the board of the London Museum, the Royal Mint Museum, and World Monuments Fund UK.