A non-fiction book researched and co-authored by academics from the University of Nottingham and Bishop Grosseteste University exploring Florence Nightingale’s relationship with home has won the “Best Achievement” award in the 2022 People’s Book Prize.

There are no judges apart from the public in the People’s Book Prize; the Best Achievement award is given each year to the author/s whose book advances the human condition, benefitting their community, or the world at large in some way.

Florence Nightingale at Home was written and researched by Professor Paul Crawford, Professor Anna Greenwood and Dr Richard Bates at the University of Nottingham and Dr Jonathan Memel from Bishop Grosseteste University as part of a major Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project called ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’.

The research team analysed primary source material not usually consulted, with access to a searchable, six-million-word collection of Nightingale’s correspondence and further unpublished material.

It is the first book to explore the importance of home to Nightingale’s life and work, contributing to the growing body of work in the humanities on the theme and meaning of ‘home’.

Paul Crawford, Professor of Health Humanities and lead for the Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020 project celebrated the win:

“It is wonderful to win this important award! We wrote the book in the hope that Florence Nightingale might become more human, more real to the public. It was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, which added a very poignant layer to the topics covered. As billions of people around the world experienced lockdown in their homes, and with the very real public health challenges, our focus on the significance of home in the life and work of Florence Nightingale, was timely to say the least!”

The book came out of our AHRC-funded project ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’ [AH/R00014X/1] to mark the bicentenary of this great nursing leader born in 1820 and is supported by a website with multiple additional resources.

Purchase your copy of the book online now.