Jonathan Phillips wins award for The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin

Professor Jonathan Phillips from the Department of History has won the Biographers' Club 'Slightly Foxed' Best First Biography award for his book, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin, from a shortlist of six highly acclaimed biographies.

Announced at the Maggs Bros rare-book in London on 10 March, the prize judges commented:

"The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin is grippingly written, wonderfully researched, and most of all, very relevant to today . . . Jonathan Phillips is a significant talent."

"There could be no grander narrative than the story of Sultan Saladin and his counter-Crusade. Jonathan Phillips’s thoroughly absorbing biography takes on a period and an individual of daunting complexity and strangeness"

"Jonathan Phillips’s thoroughly absorbing biography takes on a period and an individual of daunting complexity and strangeness, weaving a tale worthy of a leader who proved inspirational to both East and West."

Professor Phillips described the win as "A real thrill. It was really exciting to receive this level of recognition from an external literary body - and to join a varied and distinguished list of winners, it's some good company!"

Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Crusading History. He teaches undergraduate courses including Saladin, Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade and on Royal Holloway's unique MA in Crusader Studies.