Lyndal Roper.Image: Hachette
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Roper Is Oxford University’s Regius Professor of History
Tonight in Canada’s Cundill History Prize winner’s ceremony in Montreal, the US$75000 program has named Lyndal Roper the 2025 winner of the Cundill for
Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War from Hachette UK’s John Murray Press in the United Kingdom and and Hachette Book Group’s / Basic Books in the UnitedStates.
As Publishing Perspectives readers know well, the Cundill also provides US$10,000 to each of two runners-up (CAN$13,919).
If there’s an anti-climactic feel to the new news of Roper’s win, it may have to do with the Cundill’s process of adding these three “finalsts” to its more standard round of shortlist, longlist, and winner annoucements. This no-doubt well-intentioned device proves cumbersome in a world and profession awash in awards.
Whatever may be the thinking behind this third stage of pre-winner presentation, the most valuable element of the Cundill’s operation happily remains in place: This is a prize that can be awarded to an author “anywhere in the world.” The internationalism of this program alone warrants respect.
The Cundill History Prize 2025 Finalists
| Author | Title | Publisher / Imprint |
| Marlene L. Daut | The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe | Penguin Random House / Alfred A. Knopf |
| Lyndal Roper |
Hachette UK / John Murray Press |
|
| Sophia Rosenfeld | The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life | Princeton University Press |
In her statement of rationale for Roper’s win, the Cundill jury chair, Ada Ferrer, is quoted today, saying:
“Lyndal Roper Summer of Fire and Blood is a gripping history of the German peasant rebellions of 1524-1525, the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution.
Ada Ferrer
“At the center of her history are the peasants themselves.
“Roper traces the emergence, unfolding, and eventual undoing of the rebellion and offers a vivid and compelling portrait of the peasants’ world. Through this lens, she delivers a history of the Reformation from the ground up—as it was lived and understood by the ordinary people, who often interpreted its message as far more radical than envisioned by its architects.
“Her analysis is stunning and multifaceted, seamlessly weaving together cultural, intellectual, social, economic and religious history into a rich and engaging narrative.”
The 2025 Cundill Jury
Ferrer is joined on the jury by:
- Sunil Amrith, the Renu and Anand Dhawan professor of history at Yale;
- François Furstenberg, a professor and the director of undergraduate studies at John Hopkins University;
- Afua Hirsch, a writer, author, filmmaker, and journalist; and
- Francesca Trivellato, the Andrew W. Mellon professor of early modern European history at the Institute of Advanced Study.
The panel reportedly worked from an initial pool of more than 400 submissions, the program saying that this is a record.
Previous Winning Authors of the Cundill History Prize
- Kathleen DuVal (2024)
- Tania Branigan (2023)
- Tiya Miles (2022)
- Marjoleine Kars (2021)
- Camilla Townsend (2020)
- Julia Lovell (2019)
- Maya Jasanoff (2018)
- Daniel Beer (2017)
- Thomas W. Laqueur (2016)
- Susan Pedersen (2015)
- Gary Bass (2014)
- Anne Applebaum (2013)
- Stephen Platt (2012)
- Sergio Luzzatto (2011)
- Diarmaid MacCulloch (2010)
- Lisa Jardine (2009)
- Stuart B. Schwartz (2008)
Peter Cundill
The Cundill History Prize was established by Peter Cundill (1938-2011), who was the founder of the Cundill Value Fund. He was a native of Montreal, and took a bachelor’s degree in commerce in 1960 from McGill University, which would become—and remains—the seat of the Cundill History Prize. He would go on to have a career in investment management, opening Peter Cundill & Associates and the Cundill Value Fund.
Peter Cundill
He created the Cundill History Prize in 2008, originally with the name Cundill International Prize in History, to be “awarded annually to an author who has published a book determined to have a profound literary, social, and academic impact on the subject.”
Two years before the establishment of the Cundill Prize, he had been diagnosed with Fragile X Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome, with which he died in London at age 72.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Cundill History Prize is here. More on the international industry’s myriad publishing and book awards is here, more on the Canadian book market is here, and more on nonfiction is here.
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