2012: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (The Bodley Head) by Wade Davis

2011: Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Bloomsbury) by Frank Dikötter

2010: Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Granta) by Barbara Demick

2009: Leviathan, or the Whale (Fourth Estate) by Philip Hoare

2008: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury) by Kate Summerscale

2007: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (Bloomsbury) by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

2006: 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (Faber & Faber) by James Shapiro

2005: Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson (Picador) by Jonathan Coe

2004: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (Granta) by Anna Funder

2003: Pushkin: A biography (HarperCollins) by T.J. Binyon