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No more worlds to conquer: cancer survivor’s Alexander book wins prize
An author who battled cancer while tackling the intricacies of 12 ancient languages is celebrating after his biography of Alexander the Great won the “world’s leading non-fiction prize”.
Alexander: God, King, Man by Edmund Richardson marks the first time the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction has been awarded to a book on ancient history, highlighting the current “craze for the classics” prompted by the release Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film.
Richardson, a professor of classics at Durham University, spent a decade writing Alexander, building on recent advances in genetic sequencing, archaeological discoveries and the unearthing of new cuneiform tablets.
The end result, according to Kirsty Lang, the chair of judges, was a “biography for our time”.
Richardson’s book was chosen ahead of the bookmakers’ favourite, Patrick Radden Keeffe’s London Falling, a biography of James Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs, and Matthew Sweet’s The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland.
In his acknowledgements, Richardson laid out how he had written the book “when my own mortality felt hideously close; through years which dissolved into fluorescent-lit hospital corridors and despair”.
He outlined in The Times in June how “thanks to brilliant doctors, the cancer was cut out of me”. Then, he added, late last year he had collapsed, his body having “been in crisis for a long time”, leading to neurological tests and a further hospital stay. Weeks after leaving hospital, he “finally finished” the biography, which upon release was met with critical acclaim.
Richardson was presented with his £50,000 winner’s cheque last night, becoming the 28th winner of the award formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.
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