The Orwell Foundation

‘What I have most wanted to do... is to make political writing into an art’
About Orwell
Enter the prize

Welcome to the official website of The Orwell Foundation. The Foundation uses the work of George Orwell to celebrate honest writing and reporting, uncover hidden lives and confront uncomfortable truths.

The Foundation awards The Orwell Prize, the UK's most prestigious prize for political writing.

Programmes

The Orwell Foundation, based at University College London, awards The Orwell Prizes, Britain's most prestigious prizes for political writing. Our programmes include Unreported Britain, the Webby Award-nominated Orwell Diaries and the annual Orwell lectures. We bring Orwell to life through the Orwell: LIVE series, and The Orwell Youth Prize, an independent charity, sits under the Foundation's auspices.

The Orwell Prizes

The Orwell Lectures

Orwell's Down and Out: LIVE

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Unreported Britain

Together with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), we are delivering the Unreported Britain project as one part of the work of the new JRF-sponsored Prize The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils”

Orwell resources

A library of works about George Orwell and his work including some exclusive material and links to external Orwell content.

Selected examples
SEE ALL ORWELL BOOKS

Sponsors & Partners

The Orwell Foundation is extremely grateful to its sponsors and partners. If you would to find out more about supporting the prize, please contact us.

Orwell values

When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

George Orwell
2016-04-04T10:15:07+00:00

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings.

George Orwell
The Prevention of Literature

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:29:50+00:00

George Orwell
The Prevention of Literature

Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings.
Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

George Orwell
Why I Write

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:33:10+00:00

George Orwell
Why I Write

Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.
To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:24:33+00:00

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face… If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

George Orwell
2016-04-04T10:15:57+00:00

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face… If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

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