This year’s winner of the first prize of £1250 is George Clay, Georgetown University, for his essay ‘‘The Many Lives of Francisco de Angola’. The judges commended it as ‘an excellent essay in all facets: original, bold, conceptually sharp, and written with verve and sensitivity’.
Second prize of £250 was awarded to Peter Wells, University of East Anglia, for ‘“No Land Nor Ice in the Way”: The Collision of Science and Reality in the Speedwell’s Search for the Northeast Passage (1676)’ and due to the exceptional quality of this year’s entries, the judges recommended the award of an Honourable Mention to James Fox, St Andrews University, for ‘Numeracy, otherness and the invention of “civilisation” in Anglo-European travel writing, c.1660–c.1800’.