Wolfson History Prize 2024 Winner and Finalists

"A bold, innovative and personal work that pushes back against standard narratives of ‘inherent’ differences between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its purpose is to make contemporary South Asia intelligible to readers who are fascinated by the subcontinent’s cultural vibrancy and diversity but are often perplexed by its social and political make-up."

"Trentmann tells the dramatic story of the Germans from the middle of the Second World War, through the Cold War and the division into East and West, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunited nation’s search for a place in the world... Through a range of voices – German soldiers and German Jews; environmentalists and coal miners; families and churches; volunteers, migrants and populists – Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait over 80 years of the conflicted people at the centre of Europe."

"Traders in Men explains how thousands of merchants transformed the slave trade by devising highly efficient but violent new business methods... Truly Atlantic-wide in its vision, this study shows how the slave trade dragged millions of people into its terrible vortex and became one of the most important phenomena in world history."

"Winnie & Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t just affect the couple at its centre, but an entire nation. Bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution. Told with power and tender emotional insight, Steinberg reveals how far these forever entwined leaders would go for one another, and also, where they drew the line. For in the end both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a contest to decide how apartheid should be fought."

"In this wide-ranging history, Andrew Seaton examines the full story of the NHS. He traces how the service has changed and adapted, bringing together the experiences of patients, staff from Britain and abroad, and the service’s wider supporters and opponents... Seaton emphasizes the resilience of the NHS – perpetually 'in crisis' and yet perennially enduring – as well as the political values it embodies and the work of those who have tirelessly kept it afloat."

"In Nandini Das’s history of Roe’s years in India, she offers an insider’s view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown. It is a story of palace intrigue and scandal, lotteries and wagers unfolding as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to Indonesia."