Sudhir Hazareesingh (Balliol 1981, CUF Lecturer in Politics and Tutorial Fellow in Politics) and Richard Ovenden (Bodley’s Librarian and Professorial Fellow) have been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2021, the UK’s most prestigious history prize.
Richard Ovenden has been shortlisted for Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack (John Murray, 2020). The book explains how attacks on libraries and archives have been a feature of history since ancient times and describes the fight to preserve the knowledge that such attacks destroy. The paperback edition will be published on 27 May 2021.
Sudhir Hazareesingh has been shortlisted for Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (Allen Lane, 2020), a biography of the man who spearheaded the slave revolution that led to Haiti’s independence, whom the author describes as ‘the first black superhero of the modern age’. The book was also shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2020; shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, 2020; and a finalist for the Pen/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, 2021. Sudhir Hazareesingh’s Balliol Online Lecture, in which he talks about his book, is available on YouTube.
The winner of the Wolfson History Prize, which ‘recognises and celebrates books which combine excellence in research with readability’, will be announced on 9 June.