Our twentieth prize is open for entries

Thursday 01 November 2012

Last week The Orwell Prize 2013 – our 20th anniversary prize – launched at The Frontline Club in Paddington. The first bundles of books arrived this week and we’re excited about sending them out to our judges. Remember entry is free and we welcome everyone who meets our rules and values. If you’re interested in submitting this year have a look at our website. This year’s launch debate ‘A crisis in policing?’ was a celebrated success. A range of views were put forward by our panel, consisting of Roger Graef (criminologist and film-maker), Denis MacShane (MP for Rotherham), Vivienne Hayes (CEO for Women’s Resource Centre) and Andrew Norfolk (Times journalist). In particular the case of the Rotherham grooming scandal and police attitudes to victims of sexual assault were highlighted as important arguments in favour of reform. A video of the night will be uploaded to our website soon.

Buy a book for Burma

At our launch debate we announced plans to participate in the Irrawaddy Literature Festival – Burma’s first English language festival – in February next year. The Orwell Prize is raising funds for the festival with a ‘Buy a book for Burma’ appeal. You can read more about this and donate here.

Orwell Lecture 2012

This year’s Orwell lecture will be delivered by Christopher Andrews on the subject: The Most Important Year in British History, Secrets of the 1962 Missile Crisis. The event will take place on the evening of 22nd November at Birkbeck. You can reserve your place here.

From the archive

Now is a great time to look at work from or on the subject of Burma. Emma Larkin, who was longlisted for her book Everything is broken, has written extensively on Orwell in Burma. You can read her introduction to Burmese Days on our website. Two years ago we launched on the subject ‘What next for Burma?’ and followed up with an event at the Oxford Literary Festival, ‘The future of Burma’ and followed up with a screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ.

From elsewhere

  • In this week’s Guardian Comment is free, our Director Jean Seaton explains the decision to suspend the Blog Prize for 2013 here
  • Orwell Prize winning David Aaronovitch is named commentariat of the year at the Editorial Intelligence awards
  • The Times has apologised to Orwell Prize winning blogger NightJack after he was awarded compensation for having been hacked and outed

    • The wartime diaries

    The last entry entries was published on 15th October 1942. The next and final entry will be published on 15th November 1942. Don’t forget our other Orwell Diary blogs: his Hop-Picking Diary and The Road to Wigan Pier Diary. You can sign up to our newsletter If you’ve got any suggestions about our website(s), we’d love to hear from you – email us on katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org. You can also follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.