In 2008, he published Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend, the first major biography of Florence Nightingale in over half a century, which was awarded the 2009 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and named as a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2008 and an Atlantic Magazine top book of the year.
'It will not be superseded for generations', wrote the reviewer in the Daily Telegraph [3] In 2008, Bostridge also published Because You Died, a selection of Vera Brittain's First World War poetry and prose, to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice.
In June 2016, Bostridge was one of a group of biographers, historians, and other academics who signed a letter to The Times protesting at the erection of a statue to Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
He also points to the way in which Nightingale's enormous contributions to public health are now commonly and mistakenly attributed to Seacole by a wide range of British institutions that, he says, should "frankly know better".
The Sunday Times described the book as 'Gloriously rich and capacious', while the reviewer in the Daily Telegraph stated that 'Bostridge...produces something of haunting beauty and stylistic grace'.