Australian author Helen Garner has been named the winner of the 2025 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction for How to End a Story, becoming the first writer to win the prestigious award with a collection of diaries.

The announcement of the £50,000 award was made on Tuesday evening at a ceremony in London. Robbie Millen, chair of judges and the literary editor of the Times, described Garner’s collection as “a remarkable, addictive book,” and said the decision had been unanimous among the six judges. “Garner takes the diary form – mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday – to new heights.”

The Baillie Gifford is widely regarded as the UK’s most prestigious prize for nonfiction. It is the first major literary award Garner has won in the UK, though she is one of Australia’s most celebrated authors, where her honours include the 2023 Australian Society of Authors medal, the 2019 Australia Council award for lifetime achievement in literature, and the 2006 Melbourne prize for literature. She also won the 2016 Windham-Campbell literature prize administered by Yale University.

Garner, 82, has long been recognised for her sharp-eyed, often uncompromising examinations of domestic life, creativity and morality. Born in Geelong, southern Australia, in 1942, she worked as a high school teacher and journalist before publishing her debut novel, Monkey Grip, in 1977. She has since written fiction, screenplays and nonfiction, including The Children’s Bach and This House of Grief.

How to End a Story collects decades of Garner’s diaries, tracing her life from bohemian Melbourne in the 1970s through an intense love affair in the 1980s to the breakdown of her marriage in the 1990s. The entries are characterised by what the judges called “devastating honesty, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life.”

Millen praised the breadth and humanity of the diaries, which run to 832 pages. “It’s a big book,” he said, “but Garner is such good company – funny, original, clever, self-lacerating, always interesting – that we didn’t want the story to end.”

How to End a Story was published to widespread critical acclaim. Rachel Cooke in the Observer called the diaries “the greatest, richest journals by a writer since Virginia Woolf’s.”

Garner’s next work of nonfiction, The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial, co-authored with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, will be published in the UK on 20 November, based on the infamous Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial.

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Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment management firm that has sponsored the prize since 2016, has come under fire in recent years because of its investments in fossil fuels and companies with links to Israel. Last year, boycotts of literary festivals it had sponsored, organised by the campaign group Fossil Free Books, led to the termination of partnerships between Baillie Gifford and nine festivals.

Last year’s winner, Australian author Richard Flanagan, said he would not accept the £50,000 prize money until the fund manager shared a plan to reduce its investments in fossil fuel extraction and increase investments in renewables. At a press conference held to announce the shortlist, prize director Toby Mundy said that Flanagan had had a “candid” conversation with the fund manager, but the ultimate result was that the author did not accept the money and it will instead be donated to a literacy charity.

Alongside Garner’s, the other titles shortlisted this year were The Revolutionists by Jason Burke, The Boundless Deep by Richard Holmes, Captives and Companions by Justin Marozzi, Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth, and Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson.

The Baillie Gifford was originally founded as the Samuel Johnson prize in 1999. Past winners include Antony Beevor, Jonathan Coe, Serhii Plokhy, Hallie Rubenhold and Katherine Rundell.

This year’s judging panel comprised Millen, historian Pratinav Anil, journalist and broadcaster Inaya Folarin Iman, author and previous Baillie Gifford winner Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the Economist’s deputy culture editor Rachel Lloyd, and author and biographer Peter Parker. The panel selected the winner from more than 350 books published between November 2024 and October 2025.

• To order How to End a Story and browse the shortlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

“Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, international terrorists” are among the subjects covered by books on this year’s Baillie Gifford shortlist, according to its judging chair, Robbie Millen.

Literature is a theme of this year’s list, which features the collected diaries of the Australian writer Helen Garner alongside books about the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark and the poet Tennyson.

The shortlist for the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction prize also includes books on the history of Islamic slavery and the emergence of radical extremism in the west. “The six books on this year’s shortlist have real breadth in terms of subject matter and style,” said Millen, who is literary editor of the Times and the Sunday Times.

The Guardian’s international security correspondent, Jason Burke, is shortlisted for The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s. The book “makes a counterintuitive argument”, said the judges, “tracing the decline of the left that led to the rise of Islamism”, and is “tremendously well-written”.

Garner was shortlisted for How to End a Story, described by the Guardian’s reviewer Rachel Cooke as “the greatest, richest journals by a writer since Virginia Woolf’s”.

Richard Holmes, who was previously shortlisted in 1999 and 2009, this time makes the cut for The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief.

Frances Wilson, previously longlisted in 2016 and 2021, was chosen for Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, described as a “canny biography” by Olivia Laing in her Guardian review.

Asked about the literary bent to this year’s shortlist at a press conference on Wednesday, Millen said that there was “probably less straight history being published than perhaps a few years ago”.

Completing this year’s shortlist is Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi, and Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe by Adam Weymouth.

Asked about the lack of racial diversity on the shortlist – all six authors are white – Millen said that “the diversity [the judges] were most interested in was diversity of topic and style, and it just happened that that’s the way the cards fell”.

The winner of the prize will be announced on 4 November. While the winner will take home £50,000, the other shortlisted authors will receive £5,000 each.

The Baillie Gifford prize is sponsored by the investment management company Baillie Gifford. In recent years, the firm has faced criticism for its investments in businesses connected to fossil fuels and Israel. Protests last year led to the company’s sponsorships of nine UK literary festivals coming to an end.

Last year’s winner, Richard Flanagan – who won the prize for his book Question 7 – said he would not accept the prize money until Baillie Gifford shared a plan to reduce its investment in fossil fuel extraction and increase investments in renewables.

In Wednesday’s conference, the prize director, Toby Mundy, said that Flanagan had had a “candid” conversation with the fund manager, but the ultimate result was that Flanagan did not accept the money. It will instead be donated to a literacy charity.

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The company’s commitment to sponsor the prize expires this year, so the prize is “deep into conversations” with Baillie Gifford about future sponsorship. There were “very positive indications” that the company would continue to sponsor the award, said Mundy.

Twelve books had been longlisted for this year’s prize. The longlist also featured Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick; The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet; The Last Days of Budapest by Adam LeBor; John & Paul by Ian Leslie; Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li; and Between the Waves by Tom McTague.

Joining Millen on this year’s judging panel are the historian and author Pratinav Anil; the journalist and broadcaster Inaya Folarin Iman; the cultural historian, biographer and novelist, and previous winner of the prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett; the deputy culture editor of the Economist, Rachel Lloyd; and the author and biographer Peter Parker.

Judges made their selections from 350 books published between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

Recent winners of the prize include John Vaillant, Katherine Rundell, Patrick Radden Keefe and Craig Brown.

Personal stories are a strong focus in this year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction longlist, with Yiyun Li’s memoir about the loss of her two teenage sons by suicide and Barbara Demick’s account of her role reuniting a pair of twins separated in China among those recognised.

Biographies and narrative histories which explore a recent period from a personal perspective also dominate the longlist of 12 titles – nine of which were written by journalists, including the Guardian writer Jason Burke and the BBC war correspondent Lyse Doucet. Eight of the authors are British.

The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s by Burke, which draws on his lifetime of reporting for the Guardian as a foreign correspondent, is up against The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Doucet, which weaves together the experiences of Afghans who have kept the Hotel Intercontinental running since 1969.

Judges commended Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Demick, a previous winner of the prize, for “humanising” the effects of China’s one-child policy by exposing the families torn apart by its implementation. Another longlisted title, How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by the Australian writer Helen Garner, was praised for candidly chronicling the breakdown of a marriage.

Quick Guide

The Baillie Gifford prize 2025 longlist

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The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s by Jason Burke (Bodley Head)

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins by Barbara Demick (Granta)

The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet (Hutchinson Heinemann)

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes (William Collins)

The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance 1940-1945 by Adam LeBor (Bloomsbury)

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie (Faber)

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Fourth Estate)

Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi (Allen Lane)

Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016 by Tom McTague (Picador)

Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe by Adam Weymouth (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury)

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Li, a novelist and finalist for the Pulitzer prize, was singled out as “unlike any other book on the list” with “beautiful” and “extraordinary” writing that led the judges into “the abyss of personal tragedy”.

Three biographies – of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Muriel Spark and the Beatles – also feature on the longlist.

The winner of the prize will receive £50,000, with the other shortlisted authors – who will be announced on 2 October – receiving £5,000 each.

This year’s judging panel included the Times literary editor Robbie Millen, the historian and author Pratinav Anil, the journalist Inaya Folarin Iman, the writer and historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the Economist culture journalist Rachel Lloyd and the author and biographer Peter Parker.

Millen, who was the judging chair, said “variety” was the common theme of the longlist. “All the judges were impressed, delighted and relieved by the mind-quickening variety of the books that we read in terms of style, character and subject matter … All of human life can be found in the pages of these 12 remarkable books,” he said.

Judges selected the longlist from more than 350 nonfiction books published between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

None of the writers longlisted this year were debut authors. Frances Wilson makes her third appearance on the prize’s longlist for Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, which the judges hailed as a “dazzling biography” of the novelist’s mind and character, alongside twice shortlisted Richard Holmes for The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief. This book, which focuses on the poet’s early years and his immersion in scientific thought, is a masterful look at “how poets respond to the faith-quaking challenge of science”, Millen said.

The third biography on the list, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie, is an account of the love and jealousy between the Beatles which judges found “deeply entertaining and enjoyable”.

Europe is a focus for three of the other longlisted authors. Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016 by New Statesman journalist Tom McTague is a “gripping exploration of Euroscepticism in Britain”, according to the judges. The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance by Adam LeBor “skilfully” recreates life and death in Budapest during the second world war, while Adam Weymouth’s Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe – which documents an epic walk by a wolf from Slovenia through the Alps to Italy – was praised by the judges for its discussion of conservation and rewilding.

The remaining book on the longlist is Captives and Companions, which judges described as a “thoroughly investigated” book on slavery in the Muslim world, by Justin Marozzi, winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize.

The investment management firm Baillie Gifford has sponsored the prize since 2016. Last year’s winner, Richard Flanagan, delayed accepting the £50,000 prize money for his book Question 7. In his acceptance speech, he said that he would not accept the reward until the fund manager shares a plan to reduce its investment in fossil fuel extraction and increase investments in renewables. “As each of us is guilty,” the 63-year-old concluded, “each of us too bears a responsibility to act: a writer, a fund manager.”

Last year, a campaign by Fossil Free Books (FFB) highlighted Baillie Gifford’s investments in businesses connected to fossil fuels and Israel, leading to its sponsorships of nine UK literary festivals coming to an end in June 2024.

Baillie Gifford continues to sponsor the nonfiction prize, however. Previous winners of the prize have included Antony Beevor, Jonathan Coe, Serhii Plokhy, Hallie Rubenhold and Katherine Rundell.

Browse all the novels on the Baillie Gifford 2025 longlist at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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On a Monday evening in mid-November, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel, where the Giller prize gala was taking place. The following night, in London, the Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize dinner closed with this year’s winner Richard Flanagan announcing that he would be deferring receipt of the prize money in protest. And two days later, more than a hundred authors – Isabella Hammad, Andrew O’Hagan and Maaza Mengiste among them – signed an open letter condemning the “deep-rooted hypocrisy” of the JCB prize for literature.

These awards have big purses – the Giller winner gets 100,000 Canadian dollars, the Baillie Gifford £50,000, the JCB 2.5m rupees – and can be career-makers. But the past year has seen so much pushback against the corporate sponsors behind the prizes that winning these awards is no longer a straightforwardly celebratory moment for an author.

In a pre-recorded acceptance speech video, Flanagan said that he would not take the money until Baillie Gifford shared a plan to reduce its investment in fossil fuel extraction, and that he would welcome an opportunity to speak with Baillie Gifford’s board. This capped a year of protests against the fund manager: a campaign by Fossil Free Books (FFB) highlighting the company’s investments in businesses connected to fossil fuels and Israel led to its sponsorships of nine UK literary festivals coming to an end in June.

Ahead of Flanagan’s book Question 7 being announced as this year’s winner, Baillie Gifford partner Peter Singlehurst gave a lengthy defence of the company, maintaining that its investments in fossil fuels are below the industry average. But the company “cannot offer purity” and there will “always be some grey areas”, he said.

How are authors navigating this moral territory? Last year, John Vaillant won the prize with a book that somewhat ironically is about wildfires just as FFB’s campaign was kicking off. He accepted the award and the money; this year, Flanagan decided he could “not write a book such as Question 7, which in part deals with the catastrophe of climate, with the destruction and vanishing of the world I love, and not mention it”, he told the Guardian. The Australian author has already spoken with a partner at Baillie Gifford, and Singlehurst says the company looks forward to “continuing the conversation”.

“Flanagan has earned the right to do whatever he likes with his prize,” says Vaillant. “That said, arts funding is vulnerable and shrinking.” He thinks the best approach, “even when it’s imperfect and uncomfortable” is to “stay engaged, keep the pressure on and, where appropriate, show gratitude”.

“I respect the sentiments expressed by Richard Flanagan, although he could equally have done as I did, which was to give the prize money to various public interest organisations,” said Philippe Sands, who won the Baillie Gifford prize in 2016. Viet Thanh Nguyen, who was shortlisted for this year’s prize, called on Baillie Gifford to divest from the controversial investments and pledged to donate the £5,000 he received for being shortlisted to We Are Not Numbers, an organisation publishing literary work by Palestinians from Gaza.

Meanwhile Anne Michaels was criticised for her choice to accept the Giller prize, a Canadian award that has been mired in controversy for more than a year; last year’s ceremony was twice interrupted by protests against its sponsor, Scotiabank, over its investments in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Michaels was further criticised for her winner’s speech, an edited version of which she posted on X. She did not mention Gaza or the protests, but said she writes “because the dead can read”. The statement is “a word salad of complicity”, wrote Samer Abdelnour, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s business school, in an X post. “Abhorrent moral vacuity,” added Sunny Singh, who directs the Jhalak prize for books by writers of colour.

Madeleine Thien, who won the Giller prize in 2016 and recently requested that the prize remove her name, image and work from its website, says “writers survive on very little, and I don’t judge anyone”. But “for my own part, and with my own imperfections, I wish to do right by the lives and the worlds that are at the heart of my writing.”

The latest prize sponsor to come into the spotlight is British heavy equipment manufacturer JCB. An open letter published in late November condemned the prize’s “obscuring of violence” given JCB’s “major role in the horrifying destruction of homes and livelihoods across India, Kashmir and Palestine”.

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Taken together, the “new wave” of protests against Scotiabank, Baillie Gifford and JCB suggest that “writers are not content for their talents and their hard work to be used to generate positive publicity for companies who are engaged in deeply harmful activities”, says Isobel Tarr, co-director of Culture Unstained, a campaign group that calls on cultural organisations to cut ties to fossil fuels.

Might these events deter future winners of prizes with controversial sponsors from accepting prizes or prize money, and could that threaten those prizes’ funding? Sands doubts that Flanagan’s approach will influence others: “these are very personal decisions”, though he “would expect” Baillie Gifford to “respect any writer’s views on these matters”, and hopes its sponsorship of the nonfiction prize will continue long into the future.

Drawing attention to the £100,000 donation made to ex-Baillie Gifford festivals by publisher Bloomsbury after an FFB organiser wrote to a member of senior management, Tarr says she sees it as “a positive thing that writers are not only challenging the status quo in the sector, but actively bringing about alternatives”.

Others are unconvinced such alternatives will be enough to sustain funding. The protests across the sector have come at the same time as a “big drop” in sponsorship and government support in “tough economic times”, says the Giller prize’s chief executive, Elana Rabinovitch. “You can break things much faster than you can build things.”

Salman Rushdie’s memoir about surviving being stabbed is among the books longlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction.

Rushdie’s book, titled Knife, recounts the August 2022 attack, which happened on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state, as well as the author’s recovery.

Alongside Rushdie on this year’s longlist is fellow Booker winner Richard Flanagan, with his most recent book, Question 7. No author to date has won both the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes.

Quick Guide

The Baillie Gifford prize 2024 longlist

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Judgement at Tokyo by Gary J Bass (Picador)

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer (Picador)

The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke (Abacus)

Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell (Wildfire)

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan (Chatto)

Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen (Torva)

A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Corsair)

Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux (Faber)

Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay (Bodley Head)

Knife by Salman Rushdie (Cape)

What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales (Grove)

The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz (Apollo)

The winner of the prize, which recognises the best new nonfiction, will receive £50,000. Other shortlisted authors will receive £5,000 each.

Displacement, colonialism, nuclear war and the natural environment are among the themes explored in the books on this year’s 12-strong longlist.

The titles “shed new and brilliant light on our contemporary world through explorations of history, of memory, of science and nature,” said judging chair, the journalist Isabel Hilton. “Collectively, this wonderful reflection of creativity, critical thinking and great writing left us in no doubt that the nonfiction world is overflowing with energy and talent.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2016, was longlisted for A Man of Two Faces, in which he unfolds his family’s story to examine refugeehood and identity among the Vietnamese diaspora.

The longlist features one debut book, Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell. She looks at the role of her great-grandfather David Jochelmann in the Galveston movement, in which 10,000 Jews fled to Texas before the first world war.

Also exploring displacement is Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, which follows the lives of migrants arriving at the US southern border and the policies affecting them.

The list features two authors previously recognised by the prize. Rachel Clarke, who was longlisted in 2020, is this year selected for The Story of a Heart, which blends the history of heart transplant surgery with the stories of two children connected by a transplant. Sue Prideaux, shortlisted in 2012, has this time been chosen for Wild Thing, about the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin.

Joining Hilton on this year’s judging panel are author and journalist Heather Brooke, New Scientist comment and culture editor Alison Flood, Prospect culture editor Peter Hoskin, writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade, and author and restaurant critic Chitra Ramaswamy.

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Completing the 2024 longlist is Judgement at Tokyo by Gary J Bass, Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen, Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay; What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales and The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz.

A shortlist of six titles will be announced on 10 October at Cheltenham literature festival, and the winner will be announced 19 November. The 2024 prize was open to books published between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024 written by authors of any nationality. A total of 349 books were considered this year.

Investment management company Baillie Gifford has sponsored the prize since 2016. Over the past year, the firm has been criticised over its links to Israel and fossil fuel companies by campaign group Fossil Free Books, leading to a number of authors cancelling appearances at literary festivals that were sponsored by the company.

By the beginning of June this year, all nine of the partnerships between the company and literary festivals had been cancelled, though the Baillie Gifford prize sponsorship remained in place. At the time, a spokesperson for the Baillie Gifford prize said that the prize had always found the company “to be collaborative, generous and transparent about their investments”.

Baillie Gifford “are contracted to sponsor the prize until the end of 2025 and we are fully committed to that relationship”, they added. Prize organisers told the Guardian that two authors asked to withdraw their book from consideration for this year’s prize, with one explicitly stating Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship as the reason.

Previous winners of the award include Antony Beevor, Jonathan Coe and Hallie Rubenhold. Last year, John Vaillant won the prize for Fire Weather, which tells the story of the wildfires that struck Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in 2016.

Baillie Gifford has cancelled all of its remaining sponsorship deals with literary festivals after protests over its links to Israel and fossil fuel companies.

The investment management firm refused to confirm that it had taken the decision, but the Guardian has heard from Cambridge, Stratford, Wigtown and Henley literary festivals that the company had decided not to continue its partnership with them.

Cheltenham literary festival, which announced the end of its partnership with Baillie Gifford on Wednesday, also indicated that the decision had come from Baillie Gifford.

The Borders book festival announced this week that it had decided to end Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship after this year’s event. Wimbledon BookFest has confirmed that its sponsorship from the firm will be ending after eight years, but it did not disclose whether the decision came from festival organisers or Baillie Gifford.

The move comes after mounting pressure from the campaign group Fossil Free Books (FFB), which has called on the company to cease its investments in the fossil fuel industry and also demanded it divest from companies linked to Israel, as it believes “solidarity with Palestine and climate justice are inextricably linked”.

Last month, the Hay festival organisers took the decision themselves to end Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship, while the Edinburgh international festival organisers and the asset manager “collectively agreed” to terminate theirs.

While this means that the company no longer sponsors any literary festivals, it remains the sponsor of the UK’s most prestigious prize for nonfiction, the Baillie Gifford prize.

“The Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction has happily partnered with Baillie Gifford since 2016,” a spokesperson from the prize said. “We have always found them to be collaborative, generous and transparent about their investments. They are contracted to sponsor the prize until the end of 2025 and we are fully committed to that relationship.”

Last month, more than 700 writers and publishing industry professionals signed an open letter organised by FFB, calling on Baillie Gifford to divest from fossil fuels and cease its links to Israel.

FFB said in a statement: “Over the last 18 months, research by multiple human rights NGOs has shown that Baillie Gifford holds investments worth billions in fossil fuel companies and companies with links to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

“Our research into Baillie Gifford’s investments is ongoing and we expect to release more news regarding the firm’s problematic investments in the coming days.”

The campaign group added that while it was “encouraged that an institution with such problematic investments will no longer play a role in the UK literary scene”, its “primary demand has always been for Baillie Gifford to divest”.

“FFB will continue to organise – alongside the wider divestment movement – until Baillie Gifford lives up to its claim to be a ‘responsible investor’ by divesting from fossil fuels and companies associated with human rights abuses,” the statement said.

The Hay festival was the first to pull out of its sponsorship deal with the firm, after a number of those scheduled to appear at the 2024 event, including the Labour MP Dawn Butler, the singer Charlotte Church and the comedian Nish Kumar pulled out in solidarity with FFB. Two days into the festival, Hay announced its decision to withdraw from the sponsorship deal.

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“Our first priority is to our audience and our artists,” Hay’s chief executive, Julie Finch, said at the time. “Above all else, we must preserve the freedom of our stages and spaces for open debate and discussion, where audiences can hear a range of perspectives.”

The Edinburgh international festival announced its decision the week after, with Jenny Niven, the book festival’s director, saying it had been taken “with great regret” and due to “intolerable” pressure on her team, rather than out of agreement with FFB’s stance. She said she did not believe “undermining the long-term future of charitable organisations” was “the right way to bring about change”.

Baillie Gifford has not commented on any of the sponsorship withdrawals since Edinburgh’s, when Nick Thomas, a partner at Baillie Gifford, said the firm’s sponsorship of the festival, which had been in place since 2004, “was rooted in our shared interest in making Edinburgh a thriving and culturally vibrant place to live and work”.

“We hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country,” Thomas added.

“The assertion that we have significant amounts of money in the occupied Palestinian territories is offensively misleading. Baillie Gifford is a large investor in several multinational technology companies, including Amazon, Nvidia and Meta. Demanding divestment from these global companies, used by millions of people around the world, is unreasonable and serves no purpose. Much as it would be unreasonable to demand authors boycott Instagram or stop selling books on Amazon.”

Baillie Gifford was also not a “significant fossil fuel investor”, Thomas said. “Only 2% of our clients’ money is invested in companies with some business related to fossil fuels. We invest far more in companies helping drive the transition to clean energy.”

Cheltenham literature festival and the Borders book festival have become the latest to announce that they will no longer be working with the investment management firm Baillie Gifford.

The company had previously sponsored eight literary festivals and the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction prize. However, after boycotts of the Hay festival because of Baillie Gifford’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies, the Powys-based event pulled out of the sponsorship deal.

It was swiftly followed by the Edinburgh international book festival, which announced last week the end of its 20-year partnership with the company.

Though Hay and the Borders festival in Melrose chose to end their partnership, and Edinburgh organisers and the asset manager “collectively agreed” to terminate theirs, Cheltenham organisers have indicated the decision to end the sponsorship deal came from Baillie Gifford, although the company has not confirmed this.

“We are saddened to announce that Baillie Gifford have decided to end their partnership with Cheltenham literature festival,” the organisers said via a statement on the festival’s website. “Many have in the past weeks noted that contemporary literature festivals rely on a mix of funding which includes a significant sum generated through corporate sponsorship. These funds ensure that wide access to a diverse culture remains something we can offer to all. Without it, there would be no free events, ticket prices would increase, schools programmes would reduce in scope; some festivals would close.”

“We would not have chosen to find ourselves in this position,” the organisers added. “Engagement with festivals like ours – by readers, writers, policymakers and indeed by sponsors – is a crucial means of making progress. We ask that all of us – writers, audiences, investors, book-workers – consider these questions in the round, and work together to achieve our shared goals.”

The directors of the Borders book festival, Alistair Moffat and Paula Ogilvie, and the chair, Michael Moore, said they took the decision to end the sponsorship deal “with great regret”, as they “enjoyed eight happy and productive years” working with the firm. “Baillie Gifford’s support has enabled us to put free books into the hands of thousands of children, and that aspect of their support will be sorely missed,” they said in statement.

The pressure for authors and speakers to drop out of festivals sponsored by Baillie Gifford came via the latest statement issued by the campaign group Fossil Free Books (FFB) last month, which has been signed by more than 700 writers and publishing industry professionals.

The statement reiterated the group’s previous demands that the company cease its investments in the fossil-fuel industry and also demanded that Baillie Gifford divest from companies linked to Israel, as it believes “solidarity with Palestine and climate justice are inextricably linked”.

A spokesperson for FFB said the group’s “primary demand is still for Baillie Gifford to divest and for festivals to use their relationships with Baillie Gifford to call on the firm to divest. Nevertheless, we are grateful to Cheltenham and Borders for standing alongside Hay and Edinburgh in showing leadership and listening to its authors and workers.”

Baillie Gifford has declined to comment on the end of its relationships with Borders and Cheltenham. On breaking ties with Edinburgh, Nick Thomas, a partner at Baillie Gifford, said he and his colleagues “hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country”.

Baillie Gifford also believes FFB’s assertion that the company has “nearly £10bn invested in companies with direct or indirect links to Israel’s defence, tech and cybersecurity industries” to be “seriously misleading”.

In an earlier response to the statement, Baillie Gifford had said: “We are managers of other people’s money, not our own. When it comes to subjective ethical situations relating to particular sectors (such as fossil fuels) or countries (such as Israel), our clients set the parameters and determine what to exclude or divest. We are not in a position to make exclusions of that nature based on our own ethical judgments, or in response to pressure from outside groups.”

The Edinburgh international book festival (EIBF) has announced the end of its 20-year partnership with Baillie Gifford. Last week the Hay literary festival also dropped its sponsorship from the investment management firm following a series of last minute drop-outs.

Singer Charlotte Church, comedian Nish Kumar and politician Dawn Butler were among those due to appear at Hay who decided to boycott the festival because of Baillie Gifford’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies. By the end of the festival’s second day, Hay’s organisers announced the sponsorship has been “suspended” for 2024.

According to a release from EIBF, the festival’s board and management “believe their ability to deliver an event this August that is safe and successful for audiences, authors and staff has been severely compromised, following the withdrawal of several authors and threats of disruption from activists.”

Jenny Niven, EIBF’s director, said “it is with great regret” that the partnership has ended and that pressure on her team “has simply become intolerable”.

She added that she does not believe “undermining the long-term future of charitable organisations” is “the right way to bring about change”.

She and her colleagues “continue to believe that Baillie Gifford is part of the solution in transitioning towards a more sustainable world and that the firm operates in line with our ethical fundraising policy”, she added.

The pressure for authors and speakers to drop out of festivals sponsored by Baillie Gifford came via the latest statement put out by campaign group Fossil Free Books (FFB) earlier this month, that has now been signed by more than 700 writers and publishing industry professionals. The statement reiterated the group’s previous demands that the company cease its investments in the fossil fuel industry, and also demanded that Baillie Gifford divest from companies linked to Israel, as it believes “solidarity with Palestine and climate justice are inextricably linked”.

Following the news of the end of EIBF and Baillie Gifford’s partnership, a spokesperson from FFB said the group “welcomes” the news. “Over the last eighteen months, research by multiple human rights NGOs has shown that Baillie Gifford holds investments worth billions in fossil fuel companies and companies with links to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide,” the spokesperson said. “Our primary demand has always been for Baillie Gifford to divest, and for festivals to use their relationships with Baillie Gifford to call on the firm to divest. Nevertheless, we are grateful to EIBF for showing leadership and listening to its authors and workers.”

Nick Thomas, partner at Baillie Gifford, said the firm’s sponsorship of the festival, which has been in place since 2004, “was rooted in our shared interest in making Edinburgh a thriving and culturally vibrant place to live and work”.

“We step back with the hope that the festival will thrive this year and into the future,” said Thomas. “We hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country.

“The assertion that we have significant amounts of money in the occupied Palestinian territories is offensively misleading. Baillie Gifford is a large investor in several multinational technology companies, including Amazon, Nvidia and Meta. Demanding divestment from these global companies, used by millions of people around the world, is unreasonable and serves no purpose. Much as it would be unreasonable to demand authors boycott Instagram or stop selling books on Amazon.”

Baillie Gifford is also not a “significant fossil fuel investor”, said Thomas. “Only 2% of our clients’ money is invested in companies with some business related to fossil fuels. We invest far more in companies helping drive the transition to clean energy.”

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This year, the EIBF will take place from 10-25 August. The firm’s funding for this year has already been provided and deployed.

Baillie Gifford currently remains the sponsor of a number of literary festivals, including the Cheltenham literature festival and the Cambridge literary festival, as well as the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction.

Speaking at the Hay festival, last year’s Baillie Gifford prize winner John Vaillant said he feels there is “more value” in “staying in the room” and “staying engaged” with Baillie Gifford than in boycotting the firm.

“If you want to parse their portfolio it’s really different from Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch or BlackRock,” said Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, a book about the blazes that ravaged Canada’s forests in 2016. “They don’t host prizes, they don’t invite conversation of this kind. I’m uneasy [about Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship] but my default mode when I’m uneasy is to try and keep in conversation.”