The Walter Scott Prize is in it's sixteenth year of celebrating historical fiction and on Tuesday the 18th February the 2025 longlist was revealed. 

What is the Walter Scott Prize?

Named after Walter Scott, one of the most celebrated Scotsmen to have ever lived and the founding father of the historical novel. The Prize was created in tribute to Walter Scott's contribution to literature in 2009 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and the director of the Borders Book Festival, Alistair Moffat. 

Now run by The Abbotsford Trust, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is a prestigious literary award is eligible to books written in English, set more than 60 years ago and have been published during the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. 

The winner receives £25,000 and each shortlisted author receives £1,500. This makes the Walter Scott Prize amongst the highest value fiction prizes in the UK. The Prize is run by The Abbotsford Trust and supported by the Hawthornden Foundation, the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust and the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry in memory of Elizabeth Buccleuch. 

Past Walter Scott Prize Winners

Past winners of the Walter Scott Prize include Hilary Mantel, who won for Wolf Hall in 2010 and The Mirror and the Light in 2021. Other winners include Andrea Levy, Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng, Robert Harris, John Spurling, Simon Mawer, Benjamin Myers, Robin Robertson, Christine Dwyer Hickey, James Robertson and Lucy Caldwell. Last year the Prize was awarded to Kevin Jared Hosein for Hungry Ghosts. 

2025 Walter Scott Prize Longlist

The longlist for this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is:

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

The Catchers by Xan Brooks 

Mother Naked by Glen James Brown 

Clear by Carys Davies 

The Mare by Angharad Hampshire 

The Book of Days by Francesca Kay 

The First Friend by Malcolm Knox 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh 

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller 

Munichs by David Peace 

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden 

More than half of the books on this year's longlist are from independent publishers and small presses with the authors hailing from England, Wales, Ireland, Holland and Australia. The stories on the longlist span centuries, and even millennia from Ancient Greece right up to events like the Munich Air Disaster of 1958 that are still within living memory. 

Keep Scrolling to shop this year's longlist. The shortlist will be revealed in May with the winner announced at a prize giving festival at the Borders Book Festival as is tradition and at Abbotsford in June.