Australian historian Lyndal Roper has written several books, including 2021’s Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther’s World and Legacy and 2012’s The Witch in the Western Imagination.Supplied
Australian historian and academic Lyndal Roper has won the 2025 Cundill History Prize, which comes with a purse of US$75,000 for a non-fiction work in English that combines historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal.
Her winning book, Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War, is an assessment of the far-reaching ramifications of the 16th-century rebellion that is generally considered the most significant popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. It was published by John Murray Press/Basic Books.
The announcement was made at a gala dinner in Montreal, where the annual prize is administered by McGill University. The Cundill jurors praised Roper, a University of Oxford history professor, for her “sensational” account of the revolt.
“Her analysis is stunning and multifaceted, seamlessly weaving together cultural, intellectual, social, economic and religious history into a rich and engaging narrative,” said jury chair and Princeton University history professor Ada Ferrer.
The other finalists each receive US$10,000. Yale University professor Marlene L. Daut was nominated for The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, published by Knopf. U.S. historian Sophia Rosenfeld was shortlisted for The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, from Princeton University Press.
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Awarded each year since 2008, the international prize is named for the late Montrealer F. Peter Cundill, an investor, philanthropist, marathon runner and McGill alumnus. Recent Cundill History Prize winners include Kathleen DuVal (for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America), Tania Branigan (Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution) and Tiya Miles (All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake).
The Melbourne-born Roper has written several books, including 2021’s Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther’s World and Legacy and 2012’s The Witch in the Western Imagination. She won the Gerda Henkel Prize for lifetime achievement in history in 2016.