Posted on October 19, 1998 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Independent. Polly Toynbee is a political and social commentator for The Guardian. She was the Social Affairs Editor at the BBC, and has worked for The Observer, The Independent and The Washington Monthly. Her books include: A Working Life, a study of unskilled work; Hospital, a study of the NHS; Lost Children: Story of Adopted Children Searching for Their Mothers; and, more recently, Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain. Together with David Walker she has written Did Things Get Better?: An Audit of Labour’s Successes and Failures, Better or Worse?: Has Labour Delivered?, Unjust Rewards and The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? As well as the Orwell Prize, she has won Columnist of the Year at the National Press Awards and the Political Studies Association’s Political Journalist of the Year award. She is president of the Social Policy Association, and Chair of the Brighton and Hove Arts Festival. She is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and sits on the board of the Political Quarterly. She has four children and lives in Lambeth.
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Posted on October 19, 1998 by The Orwell Prize -
This is the compelling biography of Jennie Lee (1904-1988), the beautiful and passionate daughter of a Scottish miner who rose to become a pioneering woman MP. Regarded as one of the finest political biographies of recent years, this book studies a remarkable woman whose stormy political career culminated in her becoming the first Minister for the Arts, and details the moving and intimate story of her marriage to Aneurin Bevan.
Posted on October 19, 1997 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Scotsman. Ian Bell was born in Edinburgh and has always lived in Scotland. A columnist on The Herald, he has also worked for The Scotsman, the Daily Record, and the TLS.
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Posted on October 19, 1997 by The Orwell Prize -
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.
Posted on October 19, 1996 by The Orwell Prize -
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.
Posted on October 19, 1996 by The Orwell Prize -
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.
Posted on October 19, 1995 by The Orwell Prize -
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.
Posted on October 19, 1995 by The Orwell Prize -
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.
Posted on October 19, 1994 by The Orwell Prize -
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).
Posted on October 19, 1994 by The Orwell Prize -
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.