- 1956: Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli
- 1957: Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons
- 1958: John Betjeman, Collected Poems
- 1959: Patrick Leigh Fermor Mani
- 1960: Andrew Young Collected Poems
- 1961: Jocelyn Baines Joseph Conrad
- 1962: Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War
- 1963: Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet
- 1964: Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince
- 1965: George D. Painter, Marcel Proust
- 1966: Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Continent of Circe
- 1967: J. A. Baker, The Peregrine
- 1968: Roy Fuller, New Poems
- 1969: John Gross, The Man of Letters
- 1970: Enid McLeod, Charles of Orleans
- 1971: Geoffrey Grigson, Discoveries of Bones and Stones
- 1972: Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf
- 1973: Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
- 1974: Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen
- 1975: Seamus Heaney, North
- 1976: Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire
- 1977: E. R. Dodds, Missing Persons
- 1978: Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House
- 1979: Geoffrey Hill, Tenebrae
- 1980: Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson, The Unquiet Heart
- 1981: Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell
- 1982: Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
- 1983: Peter Porter, Collected Poems
- 1984: Hilary Spurling, Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1884–1919
- 1985: Ann Thwaite, Edmund Gosse
- 1986: Alan Crawford, C. R. Ashbee
- 1987: Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, The Fatal Shore
- 1988: Humphrey Carpenter, The Life of Ezra Pound
- 1989: Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca
- 1990: Hugh Cecil und Mirabel Cecil, Clever Hearts
- 1991: Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 1992: Peter Hennessy, Never Again
- 1993: John Keegan, A History of Warfare
- 1994: David Gilmour, Curzon
- 1995: Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
- 1996: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Cranmer
- 1997: James Buchan, Frozen Desire
- 1998: Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections
- 1999: Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost
- 2000: Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes
- 2001: Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War
- 2002: Jane Ridley, The Architect and his Wife
- 2003: Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History
- 2004: Mark Mazower, Salonica: City of Ghosts
- 2005: Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting on the Eastern Frontiers of the British Empire
- 2006: William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal
- 2007: Graham Robb, The Discovery of France
- 2008: Kai Bird und Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- 2009: Robert John Service, Trotsky: A Biography
- 2010: Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne
- 2011: Robert Douglas Fairhurst, Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist
- 2012: Sue Prideaux, Strindberg – A Life
- 2013: Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio
- 2014: Patrick McGuinness, Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory
- 2015: Ian Bostridge, Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession
- 2016: Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
- 2017: Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine
- 2018: Julian T. Jackson, De Gaulle
- 2019: John Barton, A History of the Bible
- 2020: Judith Herrin, Ravenna: Crucible of Europe
- 2021: Mark Mazower, The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe