Growing up in Rhodesia in the 1960s, Peter Godwin inhabited a magical and frightening world of leopard-hunting, lepers, witch doctors, snakes and forest fires. As an adolescent, a conscript caught in the middle of a vicioud civil war, and then as an adult who returned to Zimbabwe as a journalist to cover the bloody transition to majority rule, he discovered a land stalked by death and danger.
When President Habyarimana’s jet was shot down in April 1994, Rwanda erupted into a hundred-day orgy of killing – which left up to a million dead. The world’s media showed the shocking pictures, and then largely moved on. Fergal Keane travelled through the country as the genocide was continuing, and his powerful account reveals the terrible truths behind the headlines. He takes us to the scene of the appalling massacre at Nyarubuye, to the camp in Tanzania where the chief perpetrator lives like a prince, to the orphanages and Red Cross hospital, through territory controlled by Hutu extremists, and behind the siege lines, as Kigali is about to fall. Yet his searing descriptions are matched by trenchant political and historical analysis.
This book offers a few brief glimpses of hope – of individual decency and heroism – but is essentially the story of an encounter with evil. It offers an unforgettable portrait of one of the century’s greatest man-made catastrophes.
Won for journalism published by The Observer. Melanie Phillips is a journalist and writer whose column currently appears in the Daily Mail. She joined the Evening Echo in Hemel Hampstead after reading English at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and from there moved to The Guardian, via the New Society magazine. After a period as the paper’s news editor, she began writing her column in 1987, taking it to The Observer and the Sunday Times before joining the Daily Mail in 2001. She was one of the first British media figures to start a blog in 2003, moving it to The Spectator website in 2007. Her books include All Must Have Prizes, a critique of Britain’s education system; The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the Social Market Foundation; America’s Social Revolution, published by Civitas; The Ascent of Woman, a history of the ideas behind the female suffrage campaign, published by Little, Brown; and Londonistan, a bestseller in 2006. Her most recent book is The World Turned Upside Down. She also wrote a play, Traitors, which was performed at the Drill Hall in London in 1985.
An invaluable source for students of the Northern Irish conflict, this is a courageous examination of the monolith of northern Catholicism and of the intricate realities behind it. O’Connor is one of Ireland’s leading political journalists and a highly respected commentator. Her book, based on extensive interviews, is the first study of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. It examines Catholic attitudes to Britain, the Republic of Ireland, the Catholic Church, and Protestants and the IRA campaign.
Won for a special report in Private Eye: Not the Scott Report – Thatcher, Major and the Merchants of Death. Paul Foot (1937-2004) was a pioneering investigative journalist who worked for Private Eye, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian. He exposed the Poulson scandal, stood by the Bridgewater Four who were released 18 years after their wrongful conviction in 1978, and wrote a well-received critique on the Private Finance Initiative for Private Eye only a few weeks before his death. A former columnist for the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, Foot was well-known for his socialist views and attacks on Thatcherism, and was a founder member of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Since 2005, the Paul Foot Award has been awarded by Private Eye and The Guardian for investigative or campaigning journalism. Tim Laxton was a journalist, working as an investigative reporter for The Economist from 1998. In June 2007, he joined the investment-management organisation, AKO Capital LLP.
World attention has focused on the newly independent Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, as they struggle to become politically and economically viable. In this book, Anatol Lieven presents an intimate and engaging portrait of the history and culture of the Baltic states from their ancient origins to their contemporary status. He explores the culture and personality of the Baltic peoples, their religious and racial differences, their relations with Russia and with the West, and their prospects for the future. Lieven begins by describing the ancient Baltic peoples, their conquest by the Christians, the evolution of the Lithuanian empire and their union with Poland, and the experience of the Baltic provinces under the Russian Empire. He then looks at the countries’ first struggle for independence in 1918, the failure of democracy and the establishment of authoritarian regimes, and the Soviet annexation of the Baltic in 1940. Lieven discusses the class structure of the Baltics and the ethnic tensions that have existed between the Germans, Jews, Poles, and Russians who live there. Drawing on a wide range of sources including interviews, newspaper accounts, and his own observations, he describes and analyzes the rise of national movements in each of the three countries after Glastnost. He concludes by discussing the new constitutions and the elections of 1992, the current forces of order, the demolition of the Soviety economies, and the possibilities for democracy and Europeanization or for ethnic conflict and nationalist dictatorship.
Won for journalism published by The Independent on Sunday. Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and writer who has written for The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. Educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he was described by Eric Hobsbawm as ‘perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn’t really teach him much, I just let him get on with it.’ Despite offers to become an academic, Ascherson declined and moved into journalism instead. His books include The King Incorporated (1963), The Polish August (1981), The Nazi Legacy (1985), The Struggles for Poland (1987), Games With Shadows (1988), Black Sea (1995) and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (2002).