The Wolfson History Prize has announced that acclaimed historian Professor Helen King will join the judging panel for the UK’s most prestigious history writing prize in 2025, with the shortlist of six books set to be announced on Tuesday 30 September 2025, and the winner revealed on Tuesday 2 December 2025.
Now in its 53rd year, the Wolfson History Prize celebrates the best historical writing being produced in the UK, reflecting both readability for a general audience and the highest quality writing and research.
Historian of medicine and the body, and Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at The Open University, Helen King will join the Wolfson History Prize judging panel for 2025 alongside chair David Cannadine, and Mary Beard, Sudhir Hazareesingh, and Diarmaid MacCulloch. The Wolfson History Prize is the most valuable history writing prize in the UK, awarding the winner £50,000 and each of the five shortlisted authors £5,000: a total of £75,000.
Helen King said: “I am delighted to join the panel of judges for the Wolfson History Prize. History shapes us, but in turn we shape history by how we research the past and how we write its stories. It’s a privilege to be able to read the range of history writing around today and to celebrate the different voices making history writing – and education more widely – accessible to all audiences.”
Paul Ramsbottom, chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “I am delighted to welcome our new judge, Helen King, to the Wolfson History Prize judging panel. She is a historian of great distinction and range, and also very much embodies the prize’s commitment to accessible, scholarly, elegantly written history.”
Previous winners of the Wolfson History Prize include the eminent historians Simon Schama, Antonia Fraser, Eric Hobsbawm, Amanda Vickery, Halik Kochanski, Antony Beevor, Joanna Bourke, Christopher Bayly and Clare Jackson. The 2024 prize was won by Joya Chatterji for her genre-defying history of South Asia, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century.
The Wolfson History Prize is run and awarded by the Wolfson Foundation, an independent charity with a focus on research and education.
Image credits: Helen King (© BBC/Yourkevitch)
