The Duff Cooper Prize (currently known as the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize) is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and author. The prize was first awarded in 1956 to Alan Moorehead for his Gallipoli. At present, the winner receives a first edition copy of Duff Cooper's autobiography Old Men Forget and a cheque for £5,000.
Overview After Duff Cooper's death in 1954, a group of his friends decided to establish a trust to endow a literary prize in his memory. The trust appoints five judges. Two of them are ex officio: the Warden of New College, Oxford, and a member of Duff Cooper's family (initially, Duff Cooper's son, John Julius Norwich for the first thirty-six years, and then John Julius' daughter, Artemis Cooper). The other three judges appointed by the trust serve for five years and they appoint their own successors. The first three judges were Maurice Bowra, Cyril Connolly and Raymond Mortimer. At present, the three appointed judges are biographer Mark Amory, historian Susan Brigden, and TLS history editor David Horspool.
From 2013, the prize has been known as The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, following a sponsorship by Pol Roger.
Winners +Duff Cooper Prize winnersYearAuthorTitleRef.1956 Gallipoli1957 Bitter Lemons1958 Collected Poems1959 Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese1960 Collected Poems1961 Joseph Conrad1962 1963 John Keats: The Making of a Poet1964 1965 Marcel Proust1966 1967 1968 New Poems1969 1970 Charles of Orleans: Prince & Poet1971 Discoveries of Bones and Stones1972 Virginia Woolf1973 Alexander the Great1974 Wilfred Owen1975 North1976 Mussolini's Roman Empire1977 Missing Persons1978 Life in the English Country House1979 Tenebrae1980 Tennyson, The Unquiet Heart1981 Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among the Lions1982 James Joyce1983 Collected Poems1984 Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1884-19191985 Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape, 1849-19281986 C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer, and Romantic Socialist1987 19881989 Federico Garcia Lorca1990 and Mirabel Cecil Clever Hearts: Desmond and Molly Maccarthy: A Biography1991 Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius1992 Never Again: Britain, 1945-195119931994 Curzon: Imperial Statesman1995 Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth1996 Thomas Cranmer: A Life1997 Frozen Desire: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Money1998 Coleridge: Darker Reflections1999 King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa2000 John Maynard Keynes2001 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War2002 2003 Gulag: A History2004 Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-19502005 Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting on the Eastern Frontiers of the British Empire2006 The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 18572007 2008 and Martin J. Sherwin American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer2009 Trotsky: A Biography2010 How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer2011 Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist2012 Strindberg: A Life2013 2014 Other People's Countries: A Journey into Memory2015 Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession2016 Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts2017 Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine2018 A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles De Gaulle20192020 Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Empire2021 20222023France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain2024Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin2025Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler
See also
List of history awards Prizes named after people
Notes
External links The Duff Cooper Prize