Orwell Prize

For the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, see Orwell Award.

The Orwell Prize is regarded as the pre-eminent British prize for political writing.

Three prizes are awarded each year: one for a book, one for journalism and another for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to 'make political writing into an art'.^[1]

The prize was founded by Bernard Crick in 1993 using money from the royalties of the hardback edition of his biography of Orwell. Its sponsors are Orwell's adopted son Richard Blair, Reuters, The Political Quarterly, Blackwell Publishing, Media Standards Trust, and A. M. Heath & Company.^[2] Crick remained Chair of the judges until 2006. The media historian Professor Jean Seaton has filled this position since 2007.^[3]

In 2008 the winner in the Journalism category was Johann Hari. In July 2011 the Orwell Prize Council decided to revoke Hari's award and withdraw the prize. Public announcement was delayed as Hari was then under investigation by The Independent for professional misconduct.^[4] In September 2011 Hari announced that he was returning his prize "as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews", although he "stands by the articles that won the prize". ^[5] A few weeks later, the Council of the Orwell Prize confirmed that Hari had returned the plaque but not the £2000 prize money, and issued a statement that one of the articles submitted for the prize, "How multiculturalism is betraying women", published by the Independent in April 2007, "contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else’s story (specifically, a report in Der Spiegel)".^[6]

List of winners

Book category

• 1994 Anatol Lieven The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence
• 1995 Fionnuala O'Connor In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland
• 1996 Fergal Keane Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
• 1997 Peter Godwin Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
• 1998 Patricia Hollis Jennie Lee: A Life
• 1999 D. M. Thomas Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life
• 2000 Brian Cathcart The Case of Stephen Lawrence
• 2001 Michael Ignatieff Virtual War
• 2002 Miranda Carter Anthony Blunt: His Lives
• 2003 Francis Wheen Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism 1991-2000
• 2004 Robert Cooper The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty First Century
• 2005 Michael Collins The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class
• 2006 Delia Jarrett-Macauley Moses, Citizen and Me
• 2007 Peter Hennessy Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s
• 2008 Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
• 2009 Andrew Brown Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the future that disappeared
• 2010 Andrea Gillies Keeper
• 2011 Tom Bingham The Rule of Law

Journalism category

• 1994 Neal Ascherson
• 1995 Paul Foot and Tim Laxton
• 1996 Melanie Phillips
• 1997 Ian Bell
• 1998 Polly Toynbee
• 1999 Robert Fisk
• 2000 David McKittrick
• 2001 David Aaronovitch
• 2002 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
• 2003 Brian Sewell
• 2004 Vanora Bennett
• 2005 Matthew Parris
• 2006 Timothy Garton Ash
• 2007 Peter Beaumont
• 2008 Johann Hari (prize revoked in 2011, monetary award not returned^[7] )
• 2009 Patrick Cockburn
• 2010 Peter Hitchens
• 2011 Jenni Russell

Blog category

• 2009 Richard Horton: "NightJack– An English Detective" [1]
• 2010 Winston Smith (pseudonym): "Working with the Underclass" [2]
• 2011 Graeme Archer: ConservativeHome

Shortlists

Book Prize Shortlist 2008

• Nick Cohen What's Left?
• Jay Griffiths Wild
• William Hague William Wilberforce
• Ed Husain The Islamist
• Marina Lewycka Two Caravans
• Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks
• Clive Stafford Smith Bad Men

Journalism Prize Shortlist 2008

• Johann Hari The Independent
• Clive James BBC Radio 4
• Anton La Guardia The Economist
• Andrew Rawnsley The Observer
• Mary Riddell The Observer
• Paul Vallely The Independent

Book Prize Shortlist 2009

• Andrew Brown – Fishing in Utopia: Sweden & The Future That Disappeared
• Tony Judt – Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
• Owen Matthews – Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War
• Hsiao-Hung Pai – Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour
• Ahmed Rashid – Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
• Mark Thompson – The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1918

Book Prize Shortlist 2010

• Christopher de Bellaigue – Rebel Land: Among Turkey's Forgotten Peoples
• Petina Gappah – An Elegy for Easterly
• Andrea Gillies – Keeper
• John Kampfner – Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty
• Kenan Malik – From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy
• Michela Wrong – It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower

Blog Prize Shortlist 2010

• Hopi Sen - "Hopi Sen" [3]
• David Allen Green - "Jack of Kent: A liberal and critical blog mainly about the misuse and misrepresentation of law" [4]
• Laurie Penny – "Penny Red" and others [5]
• Madam Miaow (pseudonym) - "Madam Miaow says: Of culture, pop-culture and petri dishes" [6]
• Tim Marshall - "Foreign Matters" [7]
• Winston Smith (pseudonym): "Working with the Underclass" [8]

Book Prize Shortlist 2011

• Tom Bingham - The Rule of Law (Allen Lane)
• Oliver Bullough - Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus (Penguin)
• Helen Dunmore - The Betrayal (Fig Tree)
• Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22 (Atlantic Books)
• Afsaneh Moqadam - Death to the Dictator! (The Bodley Head)
• D. R. Thorpe - Supermac: The Life of Harold MacMillan (Chatto & Windus)

Special awards

In 2007, BBC's Newsnight programme was given a special award, the judges noting: "When we were discussing the many very fine pieces of journalism that were submitted Newsnight just spontaneously emerged in our deliberations as the most precious and authoritative home for proper reporting of important stories, beautifully and intelligently crafted by journalists of rare distinction." In 2008, Clive James was given a special award. In 2009, Tony Judt was given a lifetime achievement award

Sources

• The Orwell Prize - Official Site
• Media Guardian - Orwell Prize Shortlist 2008
• [9]

References

1. ^ "The award". The Orwell Prize. http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-award/about.aspx. Retrieved 2010-08-05. ^{[dead link]}
2. ^ "The sponsors". The Orwell Prize. http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-award/sponsors.aspx. Retrieved 2008-04-29. ^{[dead link]}
3. ^ "A Brief History", Orwell Prize website
4. ^ Halliday, Josh (27 September 2011). "* News * Media * Johann Hari Johann Hari faces fresh plagiarism allegations". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/27/johann-hari-fresh-plagiarism-allegations. Retrieved 27 September 2011. 
5. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-personal-apology-2354679.html
6. ^ Gunter, Joel. "Orwell Prize will not pursue Hari over failure to return money". www.journalism.co.uk. www.journalism.co.uk. http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/orwell-prize-will-not-pursue-hari-over-failure-to-return-money/s2/a546143/. Retrieved 27 September 2011. 
7. ^ Pugh, Andrew (27 September 2011). "Johann Hari yet to return Orwell prize £2,000". Press Gazette. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=47949&c=1. Retrieved 27 September 2011.