We are thrilled to report that Benjamin Wood's SEASCRAPER has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, run by the Abbotsford Trust.

Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. With a total value of over £30,000, and now in its sixteenth year, the Prize is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past.

The Prize celebrates quality, innovation, durability and ambition of writing, and is open to books first published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Reflecting the subtitle ‘Sixty Years Since’ of Scott’s most famous work Waverley, the majority of the storyline must be set at least 60 years ago.

The shortlist for the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced from Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott and the Prize, in a video narrated by James Naughtie. For the first time in the Prize’s seventeen-year history, there are five books on the shortlist, all by British authors. The shortlisted titles are:

THE PRETENDER by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury)
THE MATCHBOX GIRL by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury)
BENBECULA by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon)
ONCE THE DEED IS DONE by Rachel Seiffert (Virago)
SEASCRAPER by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

Spanning the centuries from the 1480s to the 1950s, the novels cover events and locations from the English Wars of the Roses to Austria and Germany during the Second World War, and a shocking true crime committed on a Hebridean island to an imagined encounter in a small community on the northwest coast.

The judges said:

“The five shortlisted novels for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize probe intimate lives lived in both small and big settings. Readers will hear voices usually unheard but which, once heard, won’t be forgotten. The shortlist choice is always difficult, but our authors each reveal the hidden, and in doing so offer new insights into our own times as well as the times in which their novels are set. Above all, our five authors are storytellers, so if you like a good story, the 2026 Walter Scott Prize shortlist is one you won’t want to miss.”

SEASCRAPER by Benjamin Wood

The judges said:

‘In the hands of skilled and confident novelists, small lives make big stories. Benjamin Wood is such a novelist, and in SEASCRAPER his gift to us is Thomas Flett, a shanker, scraping for shrimp in Longferry, a holiday town on England’s northwest coast. The town has a promenade but in March Longferry is ‘just another dismal place’ to pass through. Thomas dreams of music; he has traded his grandfather’s pocket-watch for a guitar. A visitor arrives. A song is written. But the marvel of the story, and the tension, lie in the measured way Wood draws us into the life of a boy thirled to a habit, and even though Thomas eschews a motor rig in favour of the old horse and cart, this is no sentimental journey. The horse is nameless; the work ‘drudging’; the sinkpits waiting to swallow you up. SEASCRAPER is a rich read, one to be savoured. When you come to the end you’ll want to start again.’

The winner of the 2026 Walter Scott Prize will be revealed on 12th June, following a live event at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose on 11th June presented by Sir Walter Scott’s great-great-great-great grandson, Matthew Maxwell Scott, alongside Prize founder and patron the Duke of Buccleuch.