
Travel writers are bridge builders, venturing out into the world to understand different peoples, cultures and times. Empathy lies at the heart of their work, and the fundamental belief that through better understanding others we can better know ourselves.
The first, annual £10,000 Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing will be awarded in 2026 to a published British or European author whose work encourages understanding between peoples and across societies.
As well as the boldness of the author’s ambition and the quality of writing, emphasis will be placed on books that enable readers to cross borders and so to draw together – on the page at least – our divided worlds.
Travel - and hence travel writing - are “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
Mark Twain
Our Judges

Sara Wheeler
Sara Wheeler is an award-winning travel writer and bestselling biographer whose 11 books include Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, Cherry: A Life of Aspley Cherry-Garrard and Glowing Still: A Woman’s Life on the Road. She is currently writing the authorised biography of Jan Morris for Faber.
Sara is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a contributing editor of the Literary Review and a regular voice on the radio.

Colin Thubron
Colin Thubron is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist. His first books were about the Middle East, then in 1982 he travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey described in Among the Russians.
From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), describing a journey through China still struggling with the legacy of the Cultural Revolution; The Lost Heart of Asia, a traveler’s study of the emergent states of Central Asia; In Siberia (Prix Bouvier); Shadow of the Silk Road, a 7,000-mile journey from China to the Mediterranean; To a Mountain in Tibet and The Amur River (Stanford Dolman Prize).
Among many awards he has won the Ness Award of the RGS and the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. In 2007 he was created a CBE, and between 2008-2017 served as President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Emma Paterson
Emma Paterson joined Aitken Alexander Associates in 2018 after five years at Rogers, Coleridge & White. Before that, she worked at The Wylie Agency. She was made a Director of Aitken Alexander and became a member of the Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee in 2020. In 2023, she was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Emma represents writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, among them a number of bestselling and prize-winning authors. Her list includes Bernardine Evaristo, Shon Faye, Natasha Brown, Claire Kilroy, Ash Sarkar, Mona Chalabi, Sanam Mahloudji, Sam Knight, Chris Power, Emma Dabiri and Victoria Adukwei Bulley.