Orwell Prize

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For the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, see Orwell Award.

The Orwell Prize is regarded as the pre-eminent British prize for political writing. Every year, two prizes are awarded: one for a book, and the other for political journalism. In each case, the winner is the shortlisted entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to 'make political writing into an art'.

The prize was founded by Sir Bernard Crick in 1993, using money from the royalties of the hardback edition of his biography of Orwell. Its sponsors are Richard Blair, the adopted son of Orwell, Reuters, The Political Quarterly, Blackwell Publishing, Media Standards Trust, and A. M. Heath & Company.^[1]

1 List of winners
2 Source
3 References

[edit] List of winners

[edit] Book category

1994 Anatol Lieven The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence
1995 Fionnuala O'Connor In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland
1996 Fergal Keane Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
1997 Peter Godwin Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
1998 Patricia Hollis Jennie Lee: A Life
1999 D. M. Thomas Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life
2000 Brian Cathcart The Case of Stephen Lawrence
2001 Michael Ignatieff Virtual War
2002 Miranda Carter Anthony Blunt: His Lives
2003 Francis Wheen Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism 1991-2000
2004 Robert Cooper The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty First Century
2005 Michael Collins The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class
2006 Delia Jarrett-Macauley Moses, Citizen and Me
2007 Peter Hennessy Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s
2008 Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

[edit] Book Prize Shortlist 2008

Nick Cohen What's Left?
Jay Griffiths Wild
William Hague William Wilberforce
Ed Husain The Islamist
Marina Lewycka Two Caravans
Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks
Clive Stafford Smith Bad Men

[edit] Journalism Prize Shortlist 2008

Johann Hari The Independent
Clive James BBC Radio 4
Anton La Guardia The Economist
Andrew Rawnsley The Observer
Mary Riddell The Observer
Paul Vallely The Independent

[edit] Special awards

In 2007, BBC Newsnight was presented with a special award, the judges noting: 'When we were discussing the many very fine pieces of journalism that were submitted Newsnight just spontaneously emerged in our deliberations as the most precious and authoritative home for proper reporting of important stories, beautifully and intelligently crafted by journalists of rare distinction.' In 2008, Clive James was given a special award also.