Costa Book Award for Biography
The Costa Book Award for Biography, formerly part of the Whitbread Book Awards, was an annual literary award for biographies, part of the Costa Book Awards. The award concluded in 2022.
Recipients
Costa Books of the Year are distinguished wit a blue ribbon.| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result | Ref. |
| 1971 | Henrik Ibsen | , Norwegian playwright and theatre director | Winner | ||
| 1972 | Anthony Trollope | , English novelist of the Victorian period | Winner | ||
| 1973 | CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman | , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908 | Winner | ||
| 1974 | Poor, Dear Brendan: The Quest for Brendan Bracken | , Irish-born businessman and British politician | Winner | ||
| 1975 | In Our Infancy | , English writer and schoolteacher | Winner | ||
| 1976 | Elizabeth Gaskell | , English writer | Winner | ||
| 1977 | Mary Curzon | , British noble, Vicereine of India | Winner | ||
| 1978 | Lloyd George: The People's Champion | , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922 | Winner | ||
| 1979 | About Time | , Welsh-born English writer | Winner | ||
| 1980 | On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson, Diarist | , English essayist and poet | Winner | ||
| 1981 | Monty: The Making of a General | KG, GCB, DSO, PC, DL, the first Viscount Montgomery of Alamein | Winner | ||
| 1982 | Bismarck | , also known as the Iron Chancellor, the first Chancellor of Germany | Winner | ||
| 1983 | Vita | The Honorable, Lady Nicolson, CH, English author and garden designer | Winner | ||
| 1983 | King George V | , King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India 1910–1936 | Winner | ||
| 1984 | T. S. Eliot | , US-born British poet | Winner | ||
| 1985 | Hugh Dalton | , British Labour politician | Winner | ||
| 1986 | Gilbert White | , English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist; author of Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne | Winner | ||
| 1987 | Under the Eye of the Clock | , Irish poet and author | Winner | ||
| 1988 | Tolstoy | , Russian writer, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina | Winner | ||
| 1989 | Coleridge: Early Visions | , English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian | Winner | ||
| 1990 | AA Milne–His Life | , British author | Winner | ||
| 1991 | A Life of Picasso | , 20th-century Spanish painter and sculptor | Winner | ||
| 1992 | Trollope | , English novelist of the Victorian period | Winner | ||
| 1993 | Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life | , English writer, jazz critic and librarian | Winner | ||
| 1994 | D H Lawrence: The Married Man | , English writer and poet | Winner | ||
| 1995 | Gladstone | , British Liberal prime minister | Winner | ||
| 1995 | Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge | Vera Brittain–A Life | , English nurse and writer | ||
| 1995 | Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth | , Architect and Minister of War Production in Nazi Germany | |||
| 1995 | Terence Rattigan | , British playwright and screenwriter | |||
| 1996 | Thomas Cranmer: A Life | , 16th-century English Archbishop of Canterbury and Protestant reformer | Winner | ||
| 1996 | Rosemary Ashton | George Eliot: A Life | , English novelist, essayist, poet, journalist, and translator | Shortlist | |
| 1996 | Flora Fraser | ' | Caroline of Brunswick,, Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover as the wife of King George IV | Shortlist | |
| 1996 | James Knowlson | Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett | , Nobel-winning modernist Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, translator and poet | Shortlist | |
| 1997 | Victor Hugo | , French novelist, poet, and dramatist | Winner | ||
| 1997 | Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse | , British harpsichordist and clavichordist | Shortlist | ||
| 1997 | Queen of Whale Cay | , Wealthy British power boat racer known for their speed, eccentric lifestyle, and gender nonconformity | Shortlist | ||
| 1997 | Citizen Lord | , Irish revolutionary | Shortlist | ||
| 1997 | Hogarth, A Life and a World | , English artist and social critic | Shortlist | ||
| 1998 | Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire | , English socialite, political organiser, style icon, author, and activist | Winner | ||
| 1998 | Iris, A memoir of Iris Murdoch | , Irish-born British writer and philosopher | Shortlist | ||
| 1998 | Hitler, Volume One Hubris 1889–1936 | , Führer of Nazi Germany | Shortlist | ||
| 1999 | Berlioz Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness | , French music composer and conductor | Winner | ||
| 1999 | Bruce Chatwin | , English writer, novelist and journalist | Shortlist | ||
| 1999 | Matisse | , 20th-century French artist | Shortlist | ||
| 2000 | Bad Blood–A Memoir | , English academic, literary critic and author | Winner | ||
| 2000 | Fanny Burney | , English diarist, novelist and playwright; the first literary woman novelist | Shortlist | ||
| 2000 | John Ruskin: The Later Years | , English writer and art critic | Shortlist | ||
| 2000 | Hitler: 1936–45 Nemesis | , Führer of Nazi Germany | Shortlist | ||
| 2001 | Selkirk's Island | , Scottish sailor and castaway | Winner | ||
| 2001 | Vermeer: A View of Delft | , Dutch painter | Shortlist | ||
| 2001 | Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson | , 9th Laird of Auchinleck, French novelist | Shortlist | ||
| 2002 | Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self | , English diarist | Winner | ||
| 2002 | Anthony Blunt: His Lives | , British art historian, Soviet spy | Shortlist | ||
| 2002 | Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA | , British chemist, biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer | Shortlist | ||
| 2002 | ' | , author of the book-turned-film Mrs. Miniver | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Orwell: The Life | , English author and journalist | Winner | ||
| 2003 | Margaret Thatcher - Volume Two: The Iron Lady | , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Martha Gellhorn | , American journalist | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith | , American novelist and short story writer | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots | Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen of Scotland from 1542 to 1567 | Winner | ||
| 2004 | Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Rogue | , businessman, philanthropist, politician, temperance campaigner and charmer | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Stephen Spender | , English poet and man of letters | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life | , British writer and literary critic | Shortlist | ||
| 2005 | Matisse the Master | , 20th-century French artist | Winner | ||
| 2005 | Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce | , American-born fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster | Shortlist | ||
| 2005 | Nature Cure | , British writer and broadcaster | Shortlist | ||
| 2005 | Stuart: A Life Backwards | , prisoner and a career criminal | Shortlist | ||
| 2006 | Keeping Mum | Winner | |||
| 2006 | George Mackay Brown: The Life | , Scottish poet 1921–1996 | Shortlist | ||
| 2006 | John Donne: The Reformed Soul | , English poet and cleric | Shortlist | ||
| 2006 | Nabeel's Song: A Family Story of Survival in Iraq | , Iraqi poet, journalist and political activist | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Young Stalin | , Leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953 | Winner | ||
| 2007 | Rudolf Nureyev | , Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Agent Zigzag | , Double agent for Britain during World War 2 | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Fatty Batter | Shortlist | |||
| 2008 | Somewhere Towards the End | , British literary editor, novelist and memoirist | Winner | ||
| 2008 | Bloomsbury Ballerina | , Russian ballet dancer | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | If You Don't Know Me By Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton | , British journalist and author | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | Chagall | , Russian-French artist | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | ' | , English theoretical physicist | Winner | ||
| 2009 | ' | , English author | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Coda | , English playwright and memoirist | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Dancing to the Precipice | , French aristocrat famous for her posthumously published memoirs, Journal d'une femme de 50 ans | Shortlist | ||
| 2010 | ' | Ephrussis family, 20th-century Ukrainian Jewish banking and oil dynasty | Winner | ||
| 2010 | How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer | , one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance | Shortlist | ||
| 2010 | My Father's Fortune | , English playwright and novelist | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas | , a seminal poet in the history of British literature known for his work exploring the notions of disconnection and unsettledness | Winner | ||
| 2011 | Thin Paths: Journeys In and Around an Italian Mountain Village | , British author of both fiction and non-fiction | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | and Henry Cockburn | Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son’s Story | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Charles Dickens: A Life | , English writer and social critic | Shortlist | ||
| 2012 | and Bryan Talbot | Dotter of Her Father's Eyes | Winner | ||
| 2012 | Patrick Leigh-Fermor: An Adventure | , British author and soldier | |||
| 2012 | ' | ||||
| 2012 | Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household | ||||
| 2013 | ' | , Italian writer | Winner | ||
| 2013 | Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins | Scottish physician and a writer on travel and medical matters | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz | Hanns Alexander, German Jewish refugee who tracked down and arrested the Kommandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2014 | H is for Hawk | Winner | ' | ||
| 2014 | Roy Jenkins: a Well-Rounded Life | , British politician, historian and writer | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | ' | , the chief art critic for The Independent | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery | Shortlist | |||
| 2015 | ' | , Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer | Winner | ||
| 2015 | ' | , British writer, Anglican deacon and photographer, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2015 | John Aubrey: My Own Life | , English writer and antiquarian | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory | Winner | |||
| 2016 | Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | I’m Not With the Band | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | In the Days of Rain | , British writer and broadcaster | Winner | ||
| 2017 | Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table | Shortlist | |||
| 2018 | Winner | ||||
| 2019 | ' | , Polish underground resistance soldier and World War II concentration camp resistance leader | Winner | ||
| 2019 | On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons | Shortlist | |||
| 2019 | ' | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, literary critic and philosopher, and William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | In Extremis | Marie Colvin, American journalist who worked as a foreign affairs correspondent | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | The Louder I Will Sing | Winner | |||
| 2021 | Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell | Winner | |||
| 2021 | Consumed: A Sister’s Story | Shortlist | |||
| 2021 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2021 | Free: Coming of Age at the End of History | Shortlist |