Archives: Political writing entriesTTTT

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.

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.

Akala is a BAFTA and MOBO award-winning hip-hop artist, writer, political commentator and social entrepreneur, as well as the co-founder of The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company. An internationally renowned musician, Akala has led innovative projects in music, education and the arts internationally. More recently known for his compelling lectures and journalism – he has been awarded an honorary degree from Oxford Brookes University and the University of Brighton, written for the Guardian, Huffington Post and the Independent, appeared on Channel 4, ITV, MTV and the BBC, and spoken for the Oxford Union and TEDx. Natives, his book on race and class in Britain, has been shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the James Tait Black Prize.

Caitlin Davies was born in London in 1964. She is the author of five novels and five non-fiction books, and has worked as a teacher and freelance journalist for 25 years. In 1989 she moved to Botswana where she worked for the country’s first tabloid newspaper, the Voice, and later as editor of the Okavango Observer. She received a Journalist of the Year award. From 2014-2017 she worked as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Westminster, Harrow, in the faculty of Media, Arts & Design.

Isabel Hardman is a journalist and broadcaster. She is Assistant Editor of The Spectator and presents Week In Westminster on BBC Radio 4. In 2015, she was named ‘Journalist of the Year’ at the Political Studies Association’s annual awards. She lives in London.

Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News International Editor. She has covered many of the conflicts of recent years, including Syria, Ukraine and the Arab Spring – sometimes alongside Marie Colvin. In 1994, she was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide began. She was in Belgrade for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, and in Baghdad for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. She has won awards from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA amongst others, and was the recipient of the 2017 Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society. Her last book Sandstorm: Libya from Gadaffi to Revolution was described by the Observeras ‘an account with historical depth to match dramatic reportage.’

Julian Jackson is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London and one of the foremost British experts on twentieth-century France. His previous books include France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book Award, and his celebrated The Fall of France, which won the Wolfson History Prize in 2004. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

Chris McGreal is a reporter for the Guardian. A former correspondent in Johannesburg, Jerusalem and Washington DC, he now writes from across the United States. He has won awards including for his reporting of the Rwandan genocide, Israel/Palestine, and on the impact of economic recession in America. He received the James Cameron prize for “work as a journalist that has combined moral vision and professional integrity”. He was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for reporting that “penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth”.

Helen Parr was aged seven when she was woken up by her mother with the news that her uncle had been killed in the Falklands War. This book is based in part on her wish to understand what happened: the story of a specific paratrooper, the world in which he lived and the people he left behind, and the Falklands War itself. She is a historian of modern Britain who teaches international relations at Keele University. Her essay ‘The Eurosceptic’s Moment’ was co-winner of the 2017 Hennessy Prize.