WINNER 2025
Sue Prideaux
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
3rd March 2025: Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin wins the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025
The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for the best non-fiction published in the UK is awarded to Sue Prideaux for Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (Faber & Faber)
The book, the first full biography of the trail-blazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin in over 30 years, drew praise from the judging panel for drawing on important new material and making “an extraordinarily bold and provocative case”.
SHORTLIST
Winner announcement
16 March
The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize celebrates the best in non-fiction writing.
The first award was made in 1956 in honour of the statesman and writer Alfred Duff Cooper (1890 – 1956) : it has been given annually ever since.
The Prize honours excellence in the genres relished by its namesake, including history, biography, travel and nature writing, politics, poetry and literary criticism.
The winner, to be announced on March 6, 2023, will receive £5,000 and a magnum of Pol Roger Champagne.
HAIL FRIEND AND READ
Part of the Latin inscription on the frieze of the Duff Cooper Library in the British Embassy, Paris. The full text, by André de Staerke and Patrick Leigh Fermor in 1958, translates as ‘Duff Cooper, fortunate Ambassador to France, dedicated this place to the silent friendship of books so that readers might be numbered among his friends. Hail, friend, and read’.
The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize celebrates the best in non-fiction writing.
The first award was made in 1956, in honour of the statesman and writer Alfred Duff Cooper, and it has been given annually ever since.
The Prize honours excellence in the genres relished by its namesake, including history, biography, travel writing, politics, poetry and literary criticism.
Hail friend and read
Part of the Latin inscription on the frieze of the Duff Cooper Library in the British Embassy, Paris. The full text, composed by André de Staerke and Patrick Leigh Fermor in 1958, translates as ‘Duff Cooper, fortunate Ambassador to France, dedicated this place to the silent friendship of books so that readers might be numbered among his friends. Hail, friend, and read’.
Alfred Duff Cooper (1890 – 1954) statesman, diplomat and author, won the DSO as a second lieutenant in the First World War, and entered Parliament in 1923.
His life was devoted to politics until 1938 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he resigned in protest at the Munich Agreement.
Called back to office by Churchill in 1940, his wartime career culminated in his appointment as Ambassador to France.
Among his best-known books are Talleyrand, Operation Heartbreak and his autobiography, Old Men Forget.
Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace.
DUFF COOPER
Old Men Forget
OUR HOME
OUR SPONSOR
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
New College is the home of the Duff Cooper Memorial Fund, the charity responsible for the Prize. Duff Cooper read History at the college in 1908, and benefited from its culture of tolerance, its remarkable library and the wide learning of its tutors.
The Warden of New College is among the Prize’s five judges.
POL ROGER
The Prize is generously supported by Pol Roger, which supplies the Champagne for the annual awards ceremony and contributes towards the £5,000 prize money. The Pol Roger connection dates back to 11 November 1944, when, as Ambassador to newly liberated France, Duff Cooper served the 1928 vintage at an Armistice dinner for Churchill and de Gaulle. A year later, Duff introduced Churchill and Odette Pol Roger, who became lifelong friends.
