Timothy Brook (Villa I Tatti)

Timothy Brook, a writer and historian of China and the Ming Dynasty, has been named chair of the jury for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.

Brook is professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and has held positions at the University of Toronto, Stanford University, and Oxford University. He has written and edited a number of books about China, including Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Great State: China and the World, and The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.

Submissions for this year’s $75,000 (U.S.) prize are open until Feb. 27. Brook’s fellow jurors will be announced in April.

Founded by McGill University alumnus F. Peter Cundill, the prize is administered by the Office of the Dean in the Faculty of Arts at McGill University and is awarded annually to a book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality, and broad appeal.

Last year’s Cundill History Prize was awarded to Lyndal Roper for Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (John Murray Press/Hachette Book Group).