University of York historian shortlisted for prestigious Wolfson History Prize

Posted on Thursday 17 September 2026

Dr Sam Wetherell, a Senior Lecturer in the history of Britain and the world, is nominated for his book, Liverpool: A Story of Britain. The work charts the city's recovery after the Second World War, the decline of its vast docklands and community resilience during deindustrialisation, culminating in the Toxteth riots.

Judges praised the book as a humane and optimistic lens through which to rethink post-industrial decline in Britain.

Now in its 54th year, the Wolfson History Prize is an annual award celebrating outstanding historical non-fiction written for a general audience. The panel selected six works spanning nearly 3,000 years of human history, focusing on how communities handle profound disruption and change. The overall winner will be announced on Tuesday 1 December 2026.

A different story

Dr Wetherell, from the Department of History at the University of York, said:“I feel absolutely delighted to be shortlisted. With this book, I wanted to tell a very different type of story about the history of modern Britain, and I wanted this story to resonate with readers outside as well as inside of academia. 

“Historical writing has always been extremely important to me and one of the reasons I love being a historian is that it is a craft where writing and communication are taken seriously. The Wolfson Prize does wonderful work in this regard, and it is the highest honour for someone like me who cares deeply about prose, storytelling and about disseminating complex ideas as widely as possible."

The six shortlisted books are:

• Liverpool: A Story of Britain by Sam Wetherell (Apollo)
• The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes (William Collins)
• Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction by Sadiah Qureshi (Allen Lane)
• Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper (Basic Books)
• The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History by Selena Wisnom (Allen Lane)
• Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples by Francis Young (Cambridge University Press)

New perspectives 

Sir David Cannadine, Chair of the Wolfson History Prize judges, said: “These remarkable six books remind us of the power of history writing, not just to uncover the past but to bring new perspectives and nuance to our understanding of the present. Each book is elegantly crafted, grounded in careful research and alive with fascinating vignettes of people and places.”

The Wolfson History Prize is the most valuable history writing prize in the UK. The overall winner receives £50,000, while each of the five remaining shortlisted authors receives £5,000. This brings the total prize fund to £75,000. Since 1972, the Wolfson Foundation has awarded over £1.6 million to more than 140 historians.

Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “In turbulent times, when the past itself is often bitterly contested, careful, thoughtful history is ever more important.”