Winners of the 2019 Runciman Book Prize

The £9,000 award, sponsored by Elias Paraskevas Attorneys¹⁹³³, was shared between: –

Time and its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire
Paul J Kosmin
Belknap Press of Harvard

The Transformation of Athens
Robin Osborne
Princeton University Press

Paul Kosmin’s book has far-reaching consequences for the study of history, because it touches upon two fundamental concepts by which we understand ourselves and our place in the world: temporality and historicity. Robin Osborne offers new ways of looking at the intricate interleaving of art and society and, most crucially, at the ways we, as moral agents, may transform ourselves, our sense of self and place, in trying to understand the transformation of our society.

Dr Dionysis Kapsalis, Chairman of the judging panel

Full text of speech at the award ceremony on 13th June

Also on the short list were the following four books which the judges commended highly: –

The Gardens of Corfu
Rachel Weaving with Marianne Majerus
Impress

The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past
András Németh
CUP

The Best of the Grammarians
Francesca Schironi
University of Michigan Press

Hesiod – Works and Days
A E Stallings (trans.)
Penguin Classics