Episode description

Six historians have been shortlisted for the 2023 history writing prize which has been awarded for over fifty years. Rana Mitter has been talking to the authors about the books in contention: African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History by Hakim Adi The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London by Oskar Jensen Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945 by Halik Kochanski Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers by Emma Smith

The winner is announced on November 13th 2023. You can find interviews with past nominees for the Wolfson prize, plus winners of other non fiction prizes like the Cundill and the British Academy Book Prize in previous editions of Free Thinking all available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast.

Producer: Ruth Watts