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The Orwell Prize 2012 shortlist announcement and debate will take place in less than a fortnight at the Boardroom, University of Westminster, Regent Street W1B 2UW. As Jean Seaton highlighted in a recent press release, we are concerned by the lack of submissions from black and ethnic minority journalists for the 2012 prize. Subsequently the subject open for debate at this year’s shortlist announcement will be; Our overwhelmingly white media are inevitably delivering ‘white news’. A panel will be chaired by Orwell Prize journalism judge, Brian Cathcart. Further details on speakers will follow on the website shortly. The event will begin at 6.30pm and all longlisted books will be available to buy from a stand put on by Marylebone Books. If you would like to attend please write to katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org to request a place.

The Price of Civilization

Unfortunately due to a misunderstanding, Jeffrey Sachs’ book was mistakenly entered to The Orwell Prize for books this year. Since it was not published first in the UK but simultaneously with the US it was not eligible. The book has been removed from the longlist, it will not be replaced.

From the archive

“Spring is still Spring,” says Orwell in his witty colourful essay ‘Some thoughts on the Common Toad’ first published in The Tribune 60 years ago. This week the 75^th anniversary of Orwell’s first novel The Road to Wigan Pier was reported on by Radio National, Australia and journalism.co.uk Orwell enthusiasts Paul Mason and Beatrix Campbell discussed Orwell and The Road to Wigan Pier with Radio National. Journalism.co.uk ran a piece on Stephen Armstrong’s new book The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited in which he re-traces the steps of Orwell in the rural North of England deep in 1930s depression drawing parallels with our 21^st century recession. Both Campbell and Armstrong spoke at our Oxford Literary Festival The Road to Wigan Pier event.

From elsewhere

The wartime diaries

This week, entries were published on 10^th and 11^th April. Over the next week, entries will be published on 18^th and 19^th April. Don’t forget our other Orwell Diary blogs: his Hop-Picking Diary and The Road to Wigan Pier Diary. If you’ve got any suggestions about our website(s), we’d love to hear from you – email us on katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org or follow us on Twitter. And you can subscribe to this newsletter via email.

We thoroughly enjoyed holding events at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival for the first time – and we hope that, via video, you enjoy them too.

• Orwell’s essay, ‘Hop-picking’, was first published by the New Statesman and Nation on 17 October 1931 – read it on our site
• A production of Burmese Days by aya theatre is to open off-Broadway – discover more by and about Orwell and Burma on our Burmese Days page
• Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending – he wrote about Orwell for the New York Review of Books in 2009
• It was a controversial year for the Booker, with many literary critics debating the merits of the prize and the shortlist – a good time, then, to read Orwell’s ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’
• The T. S. Eliot Prize announced its shortlist – there’s plenty of, and on, Orwell’s poetry on our site (including an extract from Eliot)
• It’s one year since the UK government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which was the subject of our launch debate last year
• And Norman Bissell will be talking about ‘George Orwell: The Socialist Who Loved Nature’ in Edinburgh on 29 October – Orwell’s ‘Some Thoughts on the Common Toad’ and Coming Up for Air are suitable background reading

And you can subscribe to this newsletter via email.