Baillie Gifford Prize will pick a winner of winners for its 25th anniversary

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction is celebrating a milestone with a winner of winners award.

The Guardian reports that judges chose six titles from the previous twenty-four years of the prize, and those books will compete for a £25,000 purse (about $27,800) to mark the award's twenty-fifth anniversary.

Notable observations about the contenders: just one author is British, though half of the titles deal with British icons; and two-thirds of the shortlisted authors are male, representing the same proportion of authors who have won in the past.

Here's the shortlist, with the winner to be announced April 27:

• One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown 

• Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis 

• Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick  

• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe 

• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World by Margaret Macmillan

• 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro