Inside the Trial of Shamima Begum
Bring Me Home
Decoding Shamima Begum
Anthony Loyd
Entry type: Long listsTTTT
Peter Oborne
Peter Oborne is a former political commentator of the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. He now writes about politics for Open Democracy and Middle East Eye. He is the author of The Triumph of the Political Class, and The Rise of Political Lying as well as a biography of the cricket Basil D’Oliveira.
I was a strong Brexiteer: Now we must swallow our pride and think again
British Journalists have become part of Johnson’s fake news
As a lifelong Conservative, here’s why I can’t vote for Boris Johnson
Peter Oborne clearly and honestly articulated his own rethink on Brexit. Elegantly, yet with strong feeling, he set out the painful reasoning process that led him to shift from support to opposition and what he saw as the failures of integrity and leadership behind his change of heart.”
Matthew Parris
Matthew Parris is a former MP and a prize winning author, columnist and broadcaster. He currently writes columns for The Times and the Spectator as well as presenting the BBC Radio 4 biographical programme Great Lives. He was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Press Awards 2015.
Few dare say it but knife crime is a fashion
We shouldn’t take such offence at prejudice
All ages are gullible – including our own
Zak Garner-Purkis
Zak’s muddy boots journalism is inspired by writers like George Orwell. He tries to shine a light on injustice by getting as close to the story as possible. Whether he’s investigating modern slavery in British businesses or deaths on the $15bn Istanbul Airport project.
Life ‘in the cemetery’ – Uncovering Istanbul Airport’s dirty secrets
Slavery in the supply chain: A CN investigation
Carillion’s silent victims: The dangers of speaking out
Jenni Russell
Show that you care in life, not just in death
Boris Johnson is fighting an undeclared election
Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings believe their plan can still work
Aditya Chakrabortty
Aditya Chakrabortty is senior economics commentator for the Guardian, where he writes a regular column and reports from around Britain and the world. In December 2017, he won the British Journalism Award for Comment Journalist of the year. His work has also won a Social Policy Association award, a Harold Wincott prize for Business Journalism and has been a finalist for an Orwell Prize on several occasions. He is a regular broadcaster on radio and television and tweets @chakrabortty.
A children’s book about food banks is a grim sign of our failure as a society
On the doorstep, Labour faces the question: who do you speak for?
Integrate, migrants are told. But can they ever be good enough for the likes of Blair?
Orwell would have recognised and appreciated the way Aditya Chakrabortty brings together the personal and political, from an anguished article criticising a society in which children’s books must explain poverty, to an insightful article looking at racism in Britain through the story of his own mother, who arrived from India as a bright young woman with an inquiring mind, wearing a sari.”
David Smith
David Smith has been Economics Editor of The Sunday Times since 1989, where he writes a weekly column. He is also chief leader-writer, an assistant editor and policy adviser. He also writes columns for The Times and other publications.
Scottish Independence? Just do the sums – it’s 40 years too late for that
More Stoke on Trent than Singapore on Thames
Public support for nationalisation is part of the backlash against greed
David Smith’s writings were sharp and incisive: we were most impressed by how he managed the difficult feat of presenting complex economic issues in a style the layperson could understand.”
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer, and writes for the Spectator, New European, Washington Post, Standpoint and many other publications. He is the author of five books, including What’s Left and You Can’t Read This Book.
Modern extremism: this time it’s personal
Europeans Lose Their British Home
Britain is a land of permanent crisis
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Caroline Criado Perez is a writer, broadcaster and award-winning feminist campaigner. Her most notable campaigns have included co-founding The Women’s Room, getting a woman on Bank of England banknotes, forcing Twitter to revise its procedures for dealing with abuse and successfully campaigning for a statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett to be erected in Parliament Square. She was the 2013 recipient of the Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year Award, and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015. Her first book, Do it Like a Woman, was published in 2015. She lives in London.
The judges say:
Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin
Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People , Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia’s past and present. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.
Maoism: A Global History
Julia Lovell is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her two most recent books are The Great Wall and The Opium War (which won the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize). Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction into English include Lu Xun’s The Real Story of Ah Q, and other Tales of China (2009). She is currently completing a new translation of Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en. She writes about China for several newspapers, including the Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Margaret Thatcher: Herself Alone, Vol. 3
Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher’s first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in 2013, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and Political Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.
The judges say:
Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me
Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher and journalist. Her poetry collection Slattern won a Forward Prize. Her short story ‘The Not-Dead and the Saved’ won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize. Her novel Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize. In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature, and an anthology of her students’ work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim. In 2019 she published Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools for several decades.
The judges said:
In this book, a brilliantly honest writer tackles a subject that ties so many people up in knots – education and how it is inexorably dominated by class. Yet this is the very opposite of a worthy lecture: Clanchy’s reflections on teaching and the stories of her students are moving, funny, full of love and offer sparkling insights into modern British society.”
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff has been called ‘the true prophet of the information age’ by the Financial Times for her ground-breaking book, In the Age of the Smart Machine. She is now the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School as well as Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. In 2006, strategy+business magazine named her one of the eleven most original business thinkers in the world.
The judges say:
The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984
Dorian Lynskey writes about music, film, books and politics for publications including the Guardian, the Observer, the New Statesman, GQ, Billboard, Empire, and Mojo. His first book, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, was published in 2011. A study of 33 pivotal songs with a political message, it was NME’s Book of the Year and a ‘Music Book of the Year’ in the Daily Telegraph. He hosts the Remainiacs podcast.
The Windrush Betrayal
Amelia Gentleman is a reporter and author of The Windrush Betrayal, Exposing the Hostile Environment. She won the Paul Foot award, Cudlipp award, an Amnesty award, journalist of the year British journalism awards and London press club print journalist of the year for Windrush investigations. She has also won the Orwell prize, feature and specialist writer of the year.
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Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War
Tim Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford. From 2013-2017 he was a political journalist at Channel 4 News, where he worked alongside Michael Crick, as his producer, and covered all major political events, including both the 2015 and 2017 General Elections and the EU Referendum. He regularly reviews history and politics books, and has written for the Spectator, Observer and Daily Telegraph. He has also for the last five years worked at the Chalke Valley History Festival as an interviewer.
The judges say:
Underland
Robert Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and The Lost Words, co-created with Jackie Morris. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. The Lost Words won the Books Are My Bag Beautiful Book Award and the Hay Festival Book of the Year. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.