The Orwell Prize
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The Orwell Prize is the 'most important British award for political writing' (The Observer).
The Prize looks to encourage good writing and good thinking about politics in the broadest sense, and entries should show excellence in both style and content.
Each year, two prizes - the Book Prize and the Journalism Prize - are awarded for the works which come closest to Orwell's own ambition, 'to make political writing into an art'.
A brief history
The prize was founded in 1993 by Sir Bernard Crick who, through his long-standing connection with The Political Quarterly, had negotiated with them a guarantee of funding to launch and administer two annual Orwell Prizes for political writing - one for a book and one for journalism.
The first Journalism Prize went to Neal Ascherson, while Anatol Lieven clinched the Book Prize for The Baltic Revolution.
In 2007, broadcast and film journalism as well as internet publications were included in the scope of the prize.
The Media Standards Trust became a partner, alongside the Orwell Trust and The Political Quarterly, in the administration of the prize in 2008. In August, the Orwell Diaries blog, which publishes Orwell's diary entries 70 years to the day after they were written, was launched.
Today, sponsors of the prize include Richard Blair - George Orwell's
son - alongside Thomson Reuters, A. M. Heath and Wiley-Blackwell.
Prize winners
Winners of the Book Prize include Robert Cooper, Patricia
Hollis, Fergal Keane, Francis Wheen, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Peter
Hennessy and Michael Ignatieff. The 2009 Book Prize was awarded to
Andrew Brown, for Fishing in Utopia.
Previous winners of the Journalism Prize include Polly Toynbee,
Timothy Garton Ash, Paul Foot, Brian Sewell, Matthew Parris and David
Aaronovitch. Patrick Cockburn of the London Review of Books and the Independent clinched this year's Journalism Prize.
The judges have also awarded Special Prizes in the past. Recipients include BBC Newsnight (2007),
and broadcaster and author Clive James (2008). The 2009 Special
Prize for Blogs went to Jack Night, a pseudonymous police detective.
Further details
To read more about the prize, view past winners, and find out how to enter, go to
www.theorwellprize.co.uk.
You can also visit the Orwell Prize
YouTube Channel, where you can watch the previous awards ceremonies, see interviews with some shortlisted authors, and listen to some of the entries.