2023 Shortlist
The New York Times called Balanchine ‘the Shakespeare of dancing’, his coterie of dancers knew him as ‘Mr B.’, but there were few during his lifetime who truly knew him. In this magisterial biography of the renowned choreographer, Jennifer Homans tells the full story of his life to reveal the man behind the iconic dances, set against the vivid backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped him. 

With full access to Balanchine’s papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for the New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine’s life and times, conducting over 100 interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe and America. The result is a vast and involving history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists and an absolute masterclass in the art of epic non-fiction storytelling.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/mr-b-by-jennifer-homans

2023 Shortlist
An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao’s decade of madness.

A 13-year-old Red Guard revels in the great adventure, and struggles with her doubts. A silenced composer, facing death, determines to capture the turmoil. An idealistic student becomes the 'corpse master'...

Nearly fifty years after its conclusion, the Cultural Revolution’s scar runs through the heart of Chinese society and the souls of its citizens. But official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence. In Red Memory, Tania Branigan explores the stories of those who are driven to confront the era, fearing or yearning for its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/red-memory-by-tania-branigan

2023 Shortlist
Time to Think goes behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the NHS’s flagship gender service for children.

The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in North London, was set up initially to provide — for the most part — talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But in the last decade GIDS has referred more than a thousand children, some as young as nine years old, for medication to block their puberty. In the same period, the number of young people seeking GIDS's help exploded, increasing twenty-five-fold. The profile of the patients changed too: from largely pre-pubescent boys to mostly adolescent girls, who were often contending with other difficulties.

This urgent, scrupulous and dramatic book explains how, in the words of some former staff, GIDS has been the site of a serious medical scandal, in which ideological concerns took priority over clinical practice. Award-winning journalist Hannah Barnes has had unprecedented access to thousands of pages of documents, including internal emails and unpublished reports, and well over a hundred hours of personal testimony from GIDS clinicians, former service users and senior Tavistock figures. The result is a disturbing and gripping parable for our times.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes

2024 Winner