Friday 13 May 2011
This year’s Orwell Prize awards ceremony is taking place next Tuesday, 17th May, and it would be wonderful if you could join us.
This year’s winners – of the Book Prize, Journalism Prize and Blog Prize – will be announced from 7pm, with drinks from 6.30pm, at Church House, Westminster, London SW1P 3NZ. Shortlisted books will be on sale beforehand.
If you’d like to come along, email gavin.freeguard@mediastandardstrust.org to reserve your free place. Hopefully see you next week! If you can’t make it, you can find out who’s won live on twitter.
The shortlisted books, journalists and bloggers contending for the Prize can be found on our website, with extracts of the shortlisted books and full links to the shortlisted journalism and blogposts.
Video: is it time to make monarchy history?
You can now watch full video of this year’s shortlist debate, kindly hosted by Thomson Reuters, on our website and YouTube Channel.
In the week of the Royal Wedding, the debate was on the question, ‘is it time to make monarchy history?’ featuring Peter Hitchens (winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2010), Sunder Katwala (general secretary of the Fabian Society, longlisted for the Blog Prize 2011), Iain McLean (official fellow in politics at Nuffield College, professor of politics at the University of Oxford), Joan Smith (journalist, author and supporter of Republic), and Gerry Stoker (professor of politics and governance at the University of Southampton), chaired by Jodie Ginsberg (UK and Ireland bureau chief, Thomson Reuters).
The debate was covered by Australia’s SBS Dateline programme – you can watch the report on their website.
Of course, the shortlist announcement meant a lot of great writing progressed no further in this year’s Prize – you can see the longlists, and a full list of entries, on our website.
From the archive
New to our site is Orwell’s ‘How the Poor Die’, written for Now in 1946, but based on Orwell’s time in Paris. You can read more related to Down and Out in Paris and London, including the first chapter, on our dedicated Down and Out page.
One of our previously shortlisted books, David Loyn’s Frontline (2006 Prize), is being reissued by Summersdale Publishing. We’re delighted that they’ve let us publish the first chapter on our website. You can also find David speaking at one of our Oxford Literary Festival events in 2009, on Afghanistan, and at the launch of the Orwell Prize 2009, ‘is journalism failing failing states?’
From elsewhere
- The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has made available Orwell’s entry, written by Orwell Prize founder, Sir Bernard Crick – and there’s also an audio version
- Two previous winners have new books out: previous Blog Prize winner, Winston Smith, with Generation F (Monday Books) and Anatol Lieven, the first ever Book Prize winner, with Pakistan: A Hard Country (Allen Lane)
- The New York Review of Books have published an article, ‘The Intimate Orwell’, which reviews the collections of Orwell’s diaries and letters edited by Peter Davison
- The Hay Festival has two Orwell Prize winners for the price of one on the 29th May, as Raja Shehadeh talks to Johann Hari
- Previously longlisted Lindsey Hilsum (who also spoke at our Africa and China event at the 2009 Oxford Literary Festival) was named journalist of the year at the One World Media awards, while Jonathan Steele was recognised for articles longlisted for this year’s Orwell Prize
The Wartime Diaries
Over the last few weeks, entries were published on 28th April, and 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 11th and 13th May. Over the next week, entries will be published on 18th May.
The Wigan Pier Diaries
The final entry was published on 25th March. In addition to the blog, we have a Google Map tracking Orwell’s journey, a flickr set of archive images, and our page on The Road to Wigan Pier, with the first chapter and other links. 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.