Lorien Kite is the books editor at the Financial Times. He started at the newspaper in 2000 and worked as an editor on the Comment and Analysis pages before taking on his current role in 2011. In 2014 he was a judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize (now Baillie Gifford) Prize for Non-Fiction.
Alex Clark is a critic, journalist and broadcaster who lives in London, and the current Artistic Director for Words and Literature at the Bath Festival. She writes on a wide range of subjects for the Guardian, the Observer, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. She has judged many literary awards, including the 2008 Man Booker prize. She regularly chairs live events, appears on radio and is the host of a monthly podcast for Vintage publishing.
Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother, who was a foster carer and a Caribbean father. She worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law, was a magistrate for several years and sits on adoption panels. She used to advise Social Services on the care of foster children, and has written training manuals on adoption and foster care. Her writing has received numerous awards including the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2014 and 2015 and the SI Leeds Literary Reader’s Choice Prize 2014. Her first novel, My Name is Leon, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2016. Her second novel, The Trick to Time will be published by Penguin Random House in March 2018.
I’m absolutely delighted to be one of the judges of The Orwell Prize for 2017. It’s such a privilege to read such outstanding books that illuminate a life, a country, an issue. It’s never been more important to read and understand the world around us and to stay informed.
Lord Adonis is chair of the National Infrastructure Commission and a Labour peer. He was previously an adviser to Tony Blair, heading the Policy Unit from 2001 to 2005. After joining the Lords, he became Minister of State for Education, and then Transport, before joining the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport. Before his political career, he was a journalist at The Observer and the Financial Times. He is an avid reader and writer, having published books on: his mission reforming the state education system, the aristocratic system in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, and the post-2010 election coalition negotiations.
Bonnie is a distinguished playwright, novelist and critic. She was Arts Council playwright in residence at the Soho Theatre and has written many plays for radio and the stage and an opera, Yes, written for the Royal Opera House. She is the author of two novels, Hanging by Her Teeth and Entropy, and three works of non-fiction, Obama Music, Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction and A Parallel Life. She contributes to The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Bonnie has appeared as a panellist on Newsnight Review and Question Time and has been a trustee of the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the London Film School. Bonnie is Chancellor of Kingston University. Bonnie was awarded an OBE in 2010.
Erica is a writer and critic. She is the author of Gravity, Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters and Seizure. Her poems appear in the Times Literary Supplement and she reviews regularly for The New York Times. Erica was literary editor of The Times between 1996 and 2013 and judged the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and 2014. She has also been a judge for the Orange Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Forward Prize.
Mark is a novelist and cultural critic. He has published four novels including Idlewild, Going Out Live and Enough Is Enough. His latest book is The Allegations. His work as a broadcaster includes presenting Radio 4’s Front Row and Foreign Bodies – A History of Crime Fiction and BBC4’s ‘Mark Lawson Talks to…’ He also writes for The Guardian and The New Statesman.
Jonathan is a journalist and the Executive Comment Editor at the Financial Times. He was previously the Managing Editor at Prospect, Culture Editor at the New Statesman. He has written for the Daily Telepraph, The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. In 2007 he edited Time Out: 1000 Books to change your life. Jonathan also taught Philosophy at several British universities. In 2016 he was a judge for the Bailee Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, the official historian of the BBC and took over the Orwell Prize as Director in 2007. She has written on the history and role of the media in politics, wars, revolutions, religion and childhood, including Power Without Responsibility: the Press and Broadcasting in Britain (with James Curran) and Carnage and the Media: The Making and Breaking of News about Violence, as well as (with John Lloyd)What Can Be Done? Making the Media and Politics Better. She is on the board of the Political Quarterly and Full Fact.
Victoria Glendinning is a freelance writer, well-known for her successful biographies and novels. She also writes reviews and articles, and does broadcasts and talks on all kinds of subjects.
Her biographies include A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter; Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer; Vita: the Life of V.Sackville-West (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography); Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize); Anthony Trollope (another Whitbread Prize for Biography). Her novels include The Grown-Ups, Electricity and Flight.
Victoria has been President of English PEN and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature, and although she has never had an academic post she has four honorary doctorates.
Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. He is an award-winning novelist and a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and Granta magazine. In his acclaimed first book, The Missing, O’Hagan wrote about his own childhood and told the stories of parents whose children had disappeared. The book was shortlisted for the Esquire Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award, and the McVities Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year award. Part of the book was adapted for radio and television as Calling Bible John and won a BAFTA award.
Our Fathers, his first novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. Personality, about a 13-year-old girl with a beautiful singing voice growing up above a chip shop on the Scottish island of Bute and making ready to realise her family’s dream of fame, won the 2003 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction). In 2003 Andrew O’Hagan was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. In 2004 he edited The Weekenders: Adventures in Calcutta, a collection of various writers’ accounts of Kolkata.
Blake Morrison is an award-winning writer, poet and journalist. He began his career working for the Times Literary Supplement, before serving as literary editor for The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. Blake writes across genres in the form of poetry, journalism, novel and memoir.
For his writing he has won the Eric Gregory Award, the Dylan Thomas Award, Somerset Maugham Award for Dark Glasses, E. M. Forster Award, Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone’s Non-Fiction and the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography for his memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? The book was subsequently made into a feature film starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth. His most famous works include the narrative poem The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper, an investigation into the Jamie Bulger case As if and most recently The Last Weekend. Blake is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, former chair of the Poetry Book Society, vice-chair of PEN and a member of the Orwell Trust. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Lynne Truss began her writing life as a literary journalist, editing the books section of The Listener magazine between 1986 and 1990. Since then she has kept a high profile as a journalist, writing for The Times as a critic, columnist and sportswriter (shortlisted for Sportswriter of the Year 1997); for Woman’s Journal(“Columnist of the Year”, 1996); and more recently as a critic for the Daily Mailand The Sunday Times, where she is a regular book reviewer. She has published six books, including three novels, With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Tennyson’s Gift and Going Loco. Her book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, was the publishing phenomenon of 2003.
She has also written many scripts for BBC Radio 4, including dramas, sitcoms and talks. She appears regularly on the network presenting features and taking part in discussions. Two series of her comedy series Acropolis Now have so far been broadcast (starring Stephen Moore, Robert Hardy, Imelda Staunton); also a six part series of monologues A Certain Age, and an innovative six-part series of dialogues Full Circle, starring Claire Skinner, Phyllis Logan, Michael Maloney, Phil Davis and Sheila Hancock.
Joan is a star broadcaster and writer as well as a Labour Party life peer. Working on several programmes Joan has interviewed literary greats including Alan Ginsberg and regularly contributes opinion to many national press outlets. Joan was appointed CBE in 1999 and promoted to DBE in 2008. She is the author of several books including The View from Here: Life at Seventy and her autobiography The Centre of the Bed. Her latest book is She’s Leaving Home. Between 2008 and 2010 Joan acted as a Voice of Older People.
Gillian is an award winning South African novelist, playwright and memoirist. Her 1997 memoir Every Secret Thing, about her parents’ struggles against apartheid, brought her international acclaim. Ice Road (2004) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel is Black Orchids (2008).
Claire is the Books Editor of the Guardian and the Observer. She was formerly theatre critic for the Ham & High, The Financial Times, and the Guardian, where she also worked as arts editor. She also presents the Guardian’s weekly books podcast and is a frequent commentator on radio.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill is the Provost of Eton College. He is Chairman of Coutts. He is a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, 1969-70. He was M.P. for Bristol West between 1979 and 1997 and a Minister from 1981, serving in the Cabinet between 1990 and ’97. He is a director of a number of companies. He is Chairman of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, former Chairman of the Science Museum, the Rhodes Trust, a founder trustee of the Mandela-Rhodes Foundation in South Africa and a trustee of Cumberland Lodge.
Fiammetta Rocco grew up in Kenya of French-Italian parents and read Arabic at Oxford. An award-winning journalist on both sides of the Atlantic, she has been the books and arts editor of The Economist since 2003. Her book, The Miraculous Fever Tree, about malaria and the discovery of quinine, was a Radio 4 Book of the Week. She is also the administrator of the Man Booker International Prize and on the board of the Edinburgh International Book festival.