Monday 28 November 2011
We’re delighted to confirm the full line-up of judges for this year’s Orwell Prizes. Judging the Book Prize are Miranda Carter (writer and former winner of the Orwell Prize for her Anthony Blunt: His Lives), Baroness Helena Kennedy QC (previously shortlisted for her Just Law) and Sameer Rahim (assistant books editor at the Daily Telegraph). Previous winner, and professor of journalism at Kingston University, Brian Cathcart, will be judging this year’s Journalism Prize with Ian Hargreaves, former Independent editor, former director of BBC News and Current Affairs and now professor of digital economy at Cardiff University. And this year’s Blog Prize judges are Suzanne Moore (journalist, The Guardian and the Mail on Sunday) and Hopi Sen (blogger, previously shortlisted and longlisted for the Orwell Prize). You can read more about this year’s judges on our website.
Entries now open
The Orwell Prize 2012 is now OPEN for entries. Entry forms for all three prize, and basic details of the entry process, are available on our ‘How to Enter’ page. You can also check out the full rules and the values of the Prize. Entries close on 18 January 2012, for all work first published in 2011. The Prize is self-nominating, but if you think there’s someone who should enter, either encourage them to do so or get in touch. Good luck!
George Orwell Memorial Lecture 2011
You can now watch the video of this year’s Orwell Lecture – where Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of Guardian News and Media, talked about ‘Hacking Away at the Truth’ – on our website. There’s also a copy of the full text, as well as links to previous Orwell Lectures. The Orwell Lecture is organised by the Orwell Trust with Birkbeck College, University of London.
From the archive
There’s been a lot in the press about Orwell’s essay on the perfect pub, ‘The Moon Under Water’, this week. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, The Sun and the Daily Mail all covered a new book by Paul Moody and Robin Turner, The Search for the Perfect Pub: Looking For the Moon Under Water. You can read Orwell’s original on our site, along with his review of a Mass Observation report, The Pub and the People. More on food, as well as drink: Sophie Mackenzie wrote a great piece for The Guardian on Orwell and cookery, ‘George Orwell’s hot and cold British menu’. On our site, we have Orwell’s unpublished ‘British Cookery’ essay (text, and photographs of the original typescript), his ‘In Defence of English Cooking’, and the perennial favourite, ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’. And new to our site this month: first published on 22 November 1946, Orwell’s ‘Riding Down from Bangor’.
From elsewhere
- The Orwell Society has a new website – including a video interview with Orwell’s nieces
- Photos and reviews of aya theatre’s New York production of Burmese Days are now online – more on the book on our website
- Our most recent Journalism Prize winner, Jenni Russell, wrote about political leadership…
- …while previously longlisted David Runciman wrote about the relationship between politicians and the press
- Norman Bissell talked about ‘George Orwell: The Socialist Who Loved Nature’ at the Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair – he talks about ‘Some Thoughts on the Common Toad’, which is on our website
- Previous winners Peter Beaumont and Patrick Cockburn wrote about the dangers of war reporting – Peter on freelance journalists, Patrick on the death of his Libyan fixer
- Congratulations to D. R. Thorpe, who won the Marsh Biography Prize for his Orwell Prize-shortlisted Supermac – read the first chapter on our website
- Arguably by Christopher Hitchens (shortlisted for his Hitch 22), The Memory Chalet by the late Tony Judt (winner of a Special Prize) and the longlisted Why the West Rules for Now by Ian Morris all made the New York Times’ list of 100 notable books of 2011
- London Historians blogged about Orwell and Hayes – you can read more about Orwell and London in this piece by Gordon Bowker
- You may have already seen ‘Amusing ourselves to death’, a cartoon of Orwell and Huxley’s dystopias compared – there’s now an infographic, too
- Journalist Heather Brooke chose Orwell’s Animal Farm as one of her five books on holding power to account at The Browser (more on Animal Farm on our website)…
- …while previously shortlisted Juliet Gardiner chose her five books on 1930s Britain
- Previous winner Raja Shehadeh wrote for the International Herald Tribune, ‘From Nablus to Jerusalem’
- Clive James, awarded a Special Prize in the same year, was shortlisted for the Journalism Prize with a broadcast on Damien Hirst’s diamond skull – the art work is to be displayed at the Tate Modern next year
The Wartime Diaries
The next entry will be published on 14th March.
The Hop-Picking Diaries
The final entry was published on 8th October.
The Wigan Pier Diaries
The final entry was published on 25th March. If you’ve got any suggestions about our website(s), we’d love to hear from you – email us on gavin.freeguard@mediastandardstrust.org or follow us on Twitter. And you can subscribe to this newsletter via email.