Newsletter: Invitation to this year’s Longlist Announcement and Debate

Wednesday 23 March 2011

This year’s Orwell Prize longlists will be announced next Wednesday, 30^th March – and we’re delighted to be organising an event to celebrate it for the first time. As well as announcing this year’s longlists, we’ll be running a panel discussion on political blogging, featuring previous winner, Richard Horton (aka blogging policeman, Jack Night, who was then outed by The Times) and David Allen Green (shortlisted as ‘Jack of Kent’ in 2010, one of this year’s judges). The evening will start with drinks from 6.30, before the announcement and discussion from 7pm. If you’d like to come along, please send me an email. To see a full list of this year’s record-breaking 213 entries for the Book Prize, 87 journalists for the Journalism Prize and 205 bloggers for the Blog Prize, visit our website. We’re very grateful to Preiskel & Co for hosting this event at short notice.

Orwell Prize at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2011

We have two events coming up at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival – click the links to find out more and book:

• Sunday 3^rd April, 4pm: Orwell vs Kipling with Charles Allen, Paul Anderson, Sarah Bakewell
• Tuesday 5^th April, noon: Does it make a difference who funds the arts? With Sir Mark Jones (V&A), chaired by Will Gompertz

More speakers to be confirmed shortly…

From the archive

One of Orwell’s most interesting essays on political language, ‘In Front of Your Nose’, was first published on 22^nd March 1946. You can read the article on our website. This Monday was World Poetry Day – why not take a look at Orwell’s poems in our ‘Orwell’s poetry’ section? We also have an essay by Orwell on ‘Poetry and the Microphone’ and D. J. Taylor’s take on Orwell and poetry.

The Wigan Pier Diaries

This week, entries were published on 19^th, 20^th, 21^st, 22^nd, and 23^rd March. The final entry will be published on 25^th 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.

The Wartime Diaries

This week, entries were published on 20^th and 23^rd March. Over the next week, entries will be published on 24^th 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.