Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards

The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.

The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year was previously called Dolman Best Travel Book Award (2006-2014). The award is named after Edward Stanford and is sponsored by Stanfords, a travel books and map store established in London in 1853. The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year is one of the two principal annual travel book awards in Britain, and the only one that is open to all writers. The other award is that made each year by the British Guild of Travel Writers, but that is limited to authors who are members of the Guild.

The first Dolman award was given in 2006, just two years after the only other travel book award - the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award which ran for 25 years - was abandoned by its sponsor. From its founding through 2014, the £1,000 to £2,500 prize was organized by the Authors' Club and was sponsored by and named after club member William Dolman. Beginning in 2015, a new sponsor Stanfords, a travel book store, was established along with an increase to £5,000 for the winner.

List of awards
The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards consist of the following:
 * Stanford Travel Book of the Year
 * Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing
 * Bradt Travel Guides New Travel Writer of the Year
 * Children's Travel Book of the Year
 * Fiction with a Sense of Place
 * Adventure Travel Book of the Year
 * Travel Memoir of the Year
 * Travel Blog of the Year
 * Photography and Illustrated Travel Book of The Year
 * Food & Travel Book of the Year
 * Innovation in Travel Publishing
 * New Travel Writer of the Year

Stanford Travel Book of the Year
= winner

Stanford Travel Book of the Year

2023


 * Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, In The Shadow of the Mountain
 * Alex Bescoby, The Last Overland: Singapore to London: The Return Journey of the Iconic Land Rover Expedition
 * Erika Fatland, High: A Journey Across the Himalayas Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China
 * Tobias Jones, The Po: An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River
 * Rebecca Lowe, The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East
 * Shafik Meghji, Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia
 * Alice Morrison, Walking with Nomads
 * Mary Novakovich, My Family and Other Enemies: Life and Travels in Croatia’s Hinterland

Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year

2022


 * Colin Thubron, The Amur River:Between Russia and China
 * Polly Barton, Fifty Sounds
 * Tharik Hussain, Minarets in the Mountains
 * Nina Mingya, Powles Small Bodies of Water
 * Joseph Zárate, Wars of the Interior

2021


 * Paolo Cognetti, Without Ever Reaching the Summit: A Himalayan Journey
 * Erika Fatland, The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage
 * Taran Khan, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul
 * Nanjala Nyabola, Traveling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move
 * Jini Reddy, Wanderland: A Search for Magic in the Landscape
 * Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia
 * C J Schuler, Along the Amber Route: St Petersburg to Venice
 * Jonathan C Slaght, Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl

2020
 * Robert Macfarlane, Underland
 * Rory Mclean, Pravda Ha Ha
 * Paul Theroux, On the Plain of Snakes
 * Nicholas Jubber, Epic Continent
 * Simon Winder, Lotharingia
 * Anna Sherman, The Bells Of Old Tokyo
 * Richard Bassett, Last Days in Old Europe
 * Monisha Rajesh, Around the World in 80 Trains
 * Sara Wheeler, Mud and Stars

2019


 * William Atkins, The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places
 * Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
 * Damian Le Bas, The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
 * Alev Scott, Map and Illustration by Jamie Whyte, Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire
 * Witold Szablowski, Dancing Bears: True Stories about Longing for the Old Days (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd Jones)
 * Daniel Trilling, Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe

2018


 * Patrick Barkham, Islander: A Journey Around Our Archipelago
 * Garrett Carr, The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland's Border
 * Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
 * Kushanava Choudhury, The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta
 * Philip Hoare, Risingtidefallingstar
 * Nick Hunt, Where the Wild Winds Are: Walking Europe's Winds from the Pennines to Provence
 * Isambard Wilkinson, Photographs by Chev Wilkinson, Travels in a Dervish Cloak

2017 no award

2016


 * James Attlee, Station To Station: Searching for Stories On The Great Western Line
 * Geoff Dyer, White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World
 * Elisabeth Luard, Squirrel Pie (and other stories): Adventures in Food Across the Globe
 * Jim Perrin, The Hills of Wales
 * Julian Sayarer, Interstate: Hitchhiking Through the State of a Nation
 * Paul Theroux, Deep South

2015


 * Philip Marsden, Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place
 * Helena Attlee, The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit
 * Horatio Clare, Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men
 * Nick Hunt, Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor's footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn
 * Jens Mühling, A Journey into Russia
 * Elizabeth Pisani, Indonesia Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation

Dolman Best Travel Book Award

2014


 * Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia
 * Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road
 * Charlotte Higgins, Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain
 * Iain Sinclair, American Smoke
 * Sylvain Tesson, Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga
 * Sara Wheeler, O My America!

2013


 * Noo Saro-Wiwa, Looking For Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria
 * Jeremy Seal, Meander: East to West Along a Turkish River
 * Kathleen Jamie, Sightlines
 * A. A. Gill, The Golden Door: Letters to America
 * Robert MacFarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
 * Michael Jacobs, The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia

2012


 * Julia Blackburn, Thin Paths: Journeys in and around an Italian Mountain Village
 * John Gimlette, Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge
 * Jacek Hugo-Bader, White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia
 * Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface
 * Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America
 * Colin Thubron, To a Mountain in Tibet

2011


 * Nicolas Jubber, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan
 * Rachel Polonsky, Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History
 * Katherine Russell Rich, Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language
 * Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
 * Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
 * Simon Winder, Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History

2010


 * William Blacker, Along the Enchanted Way
 * Horatio Clare, A Single Swallow
 * Matthew Engel, Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain
 * Daniel Metcalfe, Out of Steppe
 * Susan Richards, Lost and Found in Russia
 * Hugh Thomson, Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico
 * Ian Thomson, The Dead Yard

2009


 * Alice Albinia, Empires of the Indus
 * Andrew Brown, Fishing in Utopia
 * Richard Grant, Bandit Roads
 * Kapka Kassabova, Street Without a Name
 * Grevel Lindop, Travels on the Dance Floor
 * Dervla Murphy, The Island that Dared

2008
 * Tim Butcher, Blood River
 * Henry Hemming, Misadventure in the Middle East
 * John Lucas, 92 Acharnon Street
 * Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places
 * Christopher Robbins, In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared

2007
 * Rory McCarthy, Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated
 * David McKie, Great British Bus Journeys
 * Tom Parry, Thumbs Up Australia: Hitchhiking the Outback
 * Claire Scobie, Last Seen in Lhasa

2006
 * Nicholas Jubber, The Prester Quest
 * Joanna Kavenna, The Ice Museum
 * Ruth Padel, Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers
 * Richard Lloyd Parry, In the Time of Madness
 * Stevie Smith, Pedalling to Hawaii

Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing award
A lifetime achievement award for travel writing.


 * 2023 Tony Wheeler
 * 2022 Hilary Bradt
 * 2021 Dervla Murphy
 * 2020 Paul Theroux
 * 2019 Colin Thubron
 * 2018 Jan Morris
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Michael Palin
 * 2015 Bill Bryson

Fiction with a Sense of Place

 * 2022 Leïla Slimani, (translated by Sam Taylor),The Country of Others
 * 2020 Nickolas Butler, Little Faith
 * 2019 Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, House of Stone
 * 2018 Tristan Hughes, Hummingbird
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Adventure Travel Book of the Year

 * 2020 Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Wildest Horse Race
 * 2019 Adam Weymouth, Kings of the Yukon: One Summer Paddling Across the Far North
 * 2018 Morten Strøksnes, Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Levison Wood, Walking the Himalayas

Travel Memoir of the Year

 * 2020 Pico Iyer, A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations
 * 2019 Guy Stagg, The Crossway

Children's Travel Book of the Year

 * 2023 Hannah Gold The Lost Whale
 * 2022 Zillah Bethell, The Shark Caller
 * 2019 Alastair Humphreys, Alastair Humphreys' Great Adventurers
 * 2018 Katherine Rundell and illustrated by Hannah Horn, The Explorer
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Lucy Letherland, Rachel Williams & Emily Hawkins, Atlas of Animal Adventures

Photography & Illustrated Travel Book of the Year

 * 2022 Stuart Dunn, Only Us (Photography Travel book of the Year)
 * 2022 Matt Brown, Rhys B. Davies, illustrated by Mike Hall, Atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to Gotham City’ (Illustrated Travel book of the Year)
 * 2019 Huw Lewis-Jones, The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands
 * 2018 Londonist Mapped by AA Publishing
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Malachy Tallack & Katie Scott, The Un-Discovered Islands

Food & Travel Book of the Year

 * 2021 Yasmin Khan, Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from the Eastern Mediterranean
 * 2020 Eleanor Ford, Fire Islands
 * 2019 Caroline Eden, Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light
 * 2018 Bart van Olphen, Bart's Fish Tales
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Tessa Kiros, Provence to Pondicherry

Innovation in Travel Publishing

 * 2017-2019 no award
 * 2016 James Cheshire & Oliver Uberti, Where the Animals Go

New Travel Writer of the Year

 * 2023 Emma Willsteed, What Was Left Behind
 * 2022 Ruth Cox, Ghar Ghosts
 * 2021 Anita King, Hope in Pink Meringue
 * 2020 Kirstin Zhang, Closer to Home
 * 2019 Celia Dillow, Reflections of Dubai
 * 2018 Alan Packer, The Village Sledge Run
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Dom Tulett, The Tiger's Tail

Travel Blog of the Year

 * 2019 no award
 * 2018 Dave McClane, Man Vs Globe
 * 2017 no award
 * 2016 Lauren Williams, The Enjoyable Rut