Professor Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History and Honorary Fellow (and former Tutorial Fellow) of Balliol, has won the 2025 Cundill History Prize for her book Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025). The US$75,000 prize is given annually to a work that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal.
The 2025 Chair of the Jury, Ada Ferrer, praised the book as: ‘a gripping history of the German peasant rebellions of 1524–1525, the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. At the centre of her history are the peasants themselves. Roper traces the emergence, unfolding and eventual undoing of the rebellion and offers a vivid and compelling portrait of the peasants’ world. Through this lens, she delivers a history of the Reformation from the ground up – as it was lived and understood by the ordinary people, who often interpreted its message as far more radical than envisioned by its architects. Her analysis is stunning and multifaceted, seamlessly weaving together cultural, intellectual, social, economic and religious history into a rich and engaging narrative.’
One of the most distinguished historians working in Britain today, Professor Roper is also the author of Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet and Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany.