Newsletter: Orwell in Sheffield

Friday 04 March 2011

In this week’s Wigan Pier diaries, Orwell has travelled from Wigan to Liverpool, and is now in Sheffield. Orwell’s memories of Wigan are ‘slagheaps like mountains, smoke, rows of blackened houses, sticky mud criss-crossed by imprints of clogs, heavy-set young women standing at street corners with their babies wrapped in their shawls, immense piles of broken chocolate in cut-price confectioners’ windows’. ‘But’, according to the finished book, ‘even Wigan is beautiful compared to Sheffield’. In addition to Orwell’s diary entries from Sheffield, you can now read his notes on Sheffield on our website. We also have his notes on Wigan.

The Orwell Prize 2011

This year’s Prize has received a record-breaking 213 entries for the Book Prize, 87 journalists for the Journalism Prize and 205 bloggers for the Blog Prize. To see a full list of entrants, now linked for your reading pleasure, visit our website. The longlists will be announced on 30^th March 2011.

Orwell Lecture in Dubai

BBC journalist, Gavin Esler, will be giving the inaugural Orwell Lecture at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature on Thursday 10^th March from 7.30. You can find out more, and book tickets, on the festival’s website. And remember, we have three 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
• Tuesday 5^th April, 10am: Comedy and the Coalition
• Tuesday 5^th April, noon: Does it make a difference who funds the arts?

From elsewhere

On the web this week:

• Orwell fared rather well in a poll of 13-18 year olds for World Book Day, reminding us of interviews with Michael Foot and Richard Blair on Orwell, and a review of ‘Books vs Cigarettes’ (essay here), at teen book site Spinebreakers
• Orwell Prize-winning blogger, Jack Night, was mentioned in an Independent article on anonymous writers
• BBC FOUR’s The Beauty of Books focused on the design of the paperback edition of 1984

Events

A number of previous winners will be appearing up and down the UK over the next few weeks: Aye Write! Glasgow

• 6^th March – Peter Hennessy with Keith Jeffery (click here to book)
• 7^th March – Raja Shehadeh (click here to book)
• 8^th March – Francis Wheen (click here to book)
• 11^th March – Polly Toynbee with David Walker (click here to book)

Jewish Book Week, London

• 2^nd March – Clive James with Pascal Bruckner (click here to book)
• 6^th March – Raja Shehadeh (click here to book)
• 6^th March – Johann Hari with Gideon Levy (click here to book)

Qattan Foundation

• 4^th March – Raja Shehadeh (click here to book)

Also, this year’s Political Quarterly lecture (PQ are one of our partners) will be given by David Miliband on 8 March. Visit the LSE website for more information.

The Wigan Pier Diaries

This week, entries were published on 27^th February and 2^nd and 3^rd March. Next week, entries will be published on 5^th, 7^th, 9^th and 11^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 be published on 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th March. The next entry will be published on 14^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.