Friday 07 October 2011
Next weekend, the Orwell Prize will be at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival for the first time.
On Saturday 15th October at 10am, we’ll be discussing ‘Victorian Values’, and how the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have returned to the debate about poverty. Joining Owen Jones (author of Chavs) and Shiv Malik (journalist and author of Jilted Generation) will be Jose Harris (social historian and emeritus professor of modern history, University of Oxford). More information, and details of how to book a ticket, on our website.
On Sunday 16th October at 6pm, Orwell Prize winner Graeme Archer and previously longlisted Oliver Kamm (of The Times) will be talking about blogging at our ‘Political Network’ discussion. If you want to find out what’s next for political blogging, you can book tickets via our events listing.
The Orwell Prize and Johann Hari
English PEN released a statement earlier this week about the Prize’s suggestion that Johann Hari make a donation to them in lieu of returning his Prize money.
George Orwell Memorial Lecture 2011
Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of Guardian News and Media, will be speaking on ‘Hacking away at the truth: an investigation and its consequences’ on 10th November at 6pm. For full details of how to book and video of previous Orwell Lectures, go to our website.
The Orwell Lecture is organised by the Orwell Trust with Birkbeck College, University of London.
From the archive
Yesterday was National Poetry Day. While Orwell’s poetry is not his best-known (or, according to many critics, his best) work, his poems and writings on poetry are still worth a look. We have transcriptions of many of Orwell’s poems, links to original manuscripts of some of them, Orwell’s essay on ‘Poetry and the Microphone’, the Christmas edition of Orwell’s influential BBC radio programme Voice, and an essay by biographer D. J. Taylor in our special ‘Orwell’s Poetry’ section.
One of those poems, ‘A dressed man and a naked man’, was first published in October 1933. Another Orwell work with an anniversary this month is his essay, ‘Notes on Nationalism’, originally published in October 1945.
From elsewhere
- Aleks Krotoski will be exhibiting some of her photographs based on the first 369 words of Nineteen Eighty-Four at Foyles, Charing Cross Road. You can see the full set on Aleks’ flickr stream
- Weekend sunshine minded D. J. Taylor to think of Keep the Aspidistra Flying – and our website has both more by David, and more on the novel
- The Guardian has a new guide to, website for and map of the UK’s independent bookshops, while the Telegraph’s Book Club Tour continues – read Orwell’s ‘Bookshop Memories’ on our website
- The Huffington Post reports that one of Orwell’s books (Burmese Days, apparently) is among 12,000 titles banned from Texan prisons
- Foreign Secretary William Hague mentioned the abolition of the slave trade in his speech to Tory Party Conference – the first chapter of his shortlisted biography of campaigner William Wilberforce is on our site
- Congratulations to Rachel Shabi, joint winner of the Anna Lindh press prize for one of the articles which got her onto the Orwell Prize shortlist…
- … and well done too to Sky’s Alex Crawford on winning the James Cameron Memorial Award, and to the winners of the International Press Freedom Awards
- Our first Book Prize winner, Anatol Lieven, writes about Vladimir Putin for The Times (£) – there’s plenty about Orwell and Russia on our site
- Brian Sewell, previous Journalism Prize winner, was interviewed by Spoonfed
- The shortlist for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, for medicine in literature, was released – inaugural Wellcome winner, Keeper by Andrea Gillies, went on to win the Orwell
- And finally, good luck to Clwyd Theatr Cymru on their forthcoming production of Animal Farm – check out the Animal Farm page in our ‘By Orwell’ section.
The Wartime Diaries
The next entry will be published on 14th March.
The Hop-Picking Diaries
The next and final entry will be published on 8th October.
The Wigan Pier Diaries
The final entry was published on 25th March.
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