Winner of the 2024 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize announced!

The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for the best non-fiction published in the UK has been awarded to Julian Jackson for France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain, published by Allen Lane. The book uses the 1945 trial of Marshal Pétain to explore collusion and its consequences in post-war France.

Julian Jackson, Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary University, London, is the foremost British historian of modern France. His 2018 biography of de Gaulle, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle (2018) won an array of important awards in France, the United States and the United Kingdom – including the 2019 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize.

Artemis Cooper, chair of the judges panel said:

"Julian Jackson is one of those rare beasts, a rigorous historian with the skills of a seasoned novelist. As you read, you are inside that hot, febrile courtroom where Marshal Pétain is being tried: grappling with moral dilemmas, and the testimony of Vichy administrators desperate to exonerate themselves. As for the old man on trial, is he a hero, a traitor, or both? Who needs a thriller when real events make such compelling reading?"

Julian Jackson and Artemis Cooper will be in conversation at the Oxford Literary Festival at 12 noon on 20 March 2024.

New College is the home of the Duff Cooper Memorial Fund. Generously supported by Pol Roger, the Duff Cooper Memorial Fund is the the charity responsible for the prize. Miles Young, the Warden of New College, is a member of the judging panel.

Duff Cooper read History at New College between 1908 and 1911, and benefited from its culture of tolerance, its remarkable library, and the wide learning of its tutors.