Rachel Sylvester
with Gary Marshall, The Observer
Rachel Sylvester is political editor of The Observer. She was previously a columnist at The Times and chaired The Times Education, Health and Crime and Justice Commissions.
Gary Marshall is a Narrative Editor at The Observer and produces investigative podcast series for their ‘Tortoise Investigates’ strand. Gary’s work includes Pig Iron, which won the Gold Award for Best Documentary Podcast at the 2023 British Podcast Awards, and the chart-topping hit ‘Sweet Bobby’.
Their shortlisted pieces were:
- Hostile, degrading, offensive: women demand harsher penalties for ‘God complex’ surgeons
- Perpetrators walk among us’: how sex abusers are remaining below the NHS radar
- The God Complex – part 1
- The God Complex – part 2
With tenacity and humanity, Rachel Sylvester and Gary Marshall exposed a culture of harm embedded in one of Britain’s most trusted institutions: the victims, in this case, included both the surgeons performing life-saving work and the patients in their care. But they also went one step further, and secured real change.
– Phil Collins, Chair of Judges,
The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2026
