The winner of this year’s competition is Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race and the Politics of “Anti-Caste’ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). Congratulations to Caroline for a book that the judges though was an ‘excellent study of a remarkable episode in anti-racist politics, written with passion and a sensitive engagement’. By situating Catherine Impey, the editor of Anti Caste, within her varied social, religious and political networks Caroline provides ‘original insights into the complex inter-relationship between different radical causes’ and the links between the local, the national and the global.

The entries for the prize were so strong this year that the panel decided to announce a runner up, Gemma Allen, The Cooke Sisters: Education, Piety and Politics in early Modern England (Manchester University Press, 2013). Congratulations to Gemma for a well- researched, impressive study of the five Cooke sisters who all achieved a high level of humanist learning in Elizabethan England. The judges thought that the book provided ‘a new perspective on the question of women’s power and elite women’s education in this period’.

The panel wishes to thank all the authors and publishers who took part in the competition for the opportunity to read work of such high quality.