We're thrilled to welcome The Baillie Gifford Prize 2026 shortlisted authors to Waterstones Piccadilly.

Join us, the evening before the announcement of The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2026 winner, as we’re joined by this year's shortlisted authors.

The evening will be a celebration of non-fiction in all its forms and a special chance to hear from the shortlisted authors about their process and inspiration.The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is widely recognised as the world's most prestigious international award for literary non-fiction, open to books on any subject and to writers of any nationality.

Moderating this special event is Rachel Lloyd. Deputy Culture Editor at The Economist, and a judge for the Prize in 2025.

Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story - Drawing on newly uncovered archival material, original research and interviews, it is the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades.

Anand Gopal, Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution - In 2011, in a city in northern Syria, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew a brutal dictatorship. For the next eighteen months, many of the citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.

Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth - In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Edmund Richardson, Alexander God, King, Man - Based on more than a decade of cutting-edge research, Alexander allows readers to feel the desert wind and experience the full horror of battle. Richardson’s research has taken him from the catacombs of Egypt to the passes of Afghanistan. Alexander is a cinematic, revelatory retelling of one of the most elusive stories in history

Matthew Sweet, The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland- Drawing on unprecedented access to Cartland's vast archives and firsthand accounts from those who knew her, The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland reveals how a literary legend was made

Andrea Wulf, The Traveller The Revolutionary: Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanit - George Forster was a man out of time: he journeyed to the far reaches of the known world and challenged the worldviews of eighteenth-century Europe with radical ideas about equality and freedom. Celebrated during his lifetime, he knew Goethe, Benjamin Franklin, Mary Wollstonecraft and Alexander von Humboldt but has since been largely forgotten by history. The Traveller seeks to restore Forster as one of the great visionaries of his era.

The winning book will be announced at a ceremony in London 4th November.

Copies of all the shortlisted titles will be available for purchase at the event.

For enquiries and accessability requests, please email Events.Piccadilly@Waterstones.com

Description supplied by the event organiser.