The Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize was set up in 1994 by the late Sir Bernard Crick, funded by the hardback royalties of his biography of George Orwell. It rewards political writing that, in the opinion of the judges, comes closest to George Orwell's ambition "to make political writing into an art". Crick served as Chair of the judging panel until 2006, whereupon he was replaced by Professor Jean Seaton. Each year's judges are presented with a set of Orwell's values to aid their decision-making.
The prize began with two categories, Book and Journalism, with a third, Blog, being added in 2009. It is open to writing with a British or Irish connection published in the previous calendar year. Each category winner receives £3000.
Longlists are announced in the spring, usually featuring 18 contenders for the Book Prize and 12 for each of the other two categories. The shortlists, announced a few weeks later, feature six contenders in each category. The winner is announced in late May or early June.
In additon there have been two Special awards: in 2007 to the BBC's Newsnight and in 2008 to Clive James. Tony Judt was given a Lifetime Achievement award in 2009 and Carol Blue collected a psothumous Memorial award on behalf of her husband,Christopher HItchens.
The one major controversy involving the Prize came in the aftermath of the 2008 award of the Journalism Prize to Independent writer Johanni Hari. In 2011, the award was withdrawn after one of his articles for which he won was revealed to have plagiarised from Der Spiegel. Hari returned the plaque he had been awarded and, some time later, made a charitable donation to the value of the prize money.
The winner of the 2013 Prize was a A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa by A T Williams. The judges said, 'The greatest achievement of this incendiary, eloquent and angry book is that it humanises Mousa beyond the iconic and infamous figure he has become in his death. It was written in the spirit of Orwell¹s journalism.'
2013 Shortlist
2013 Longlist
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Previous winners of the Book Prize
2012 Dead Men Risen by Toby Harnden
2011 The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham
2010 Keeper: A Book About Memory, Identity, Isolation, Wordsworth and Cake by Andrea Gillies
2009 Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared by Andrew Brown
2008 Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh
2007 Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties by Peter Hennessy
2006 Moses, Citizen and Me by Delia Jarrett-Macauley
2005 The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class by Michael Collins
2004 The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty First Century by Robert Cooper
2003 Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism 1991-2000 by Francis Wheen (currently out of print)
2002 Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter
2001 Virtual War by Michael Ignatieff (currently out of print)
2000 The Case of Stephen Lawrence by Brian Cathcart (currently out of print)
1999 Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life by DM Thomas
1998 Jennie Lee: A Life by Patricia Hollis (currently out of print)
1997 Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa by Peter Godwin
1996 Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey by Fergal Keane
1995 In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland by Fionnuala O'Connor (currently out of print)
1994 The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence by Anatol Lieven
For winners of the Journalism and Blog categories, see the official Orwell Prize website.