Posted on October 19, 2005 by The Orwell Prize -
Matthew Parris is a former MP and a prize winning author, columnist and broadcaster. He currently writes columns for The Times and the Spectator as well as presenting the BBC Radio 4 biographical programme Great Lives. He was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Press Awards 2015.
Posted on October 19, 2004 by The Orwell Prize -
I became a journalist almost by accident. Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters (to my own surprise and the slight dismay of traditionally-minded editors who weren’t sure a Guardian-reading blonde female would be tough enough for the job), I was then catapulted into the adrenaline-charged realm of conflict reporting. While on a trainee assignment in Paris, I fell in with the Cambodian émigré community and ended up reporting in Cambodia myself, a decade after the Khmer Rouge regime ended, as well as covering Cambodian peace talks in places as far apart as Indonesia and Paris. That led to a conflict reporting job in Africa, commuting between Angola and Mozambique and writing about death, destruction, diamonds and disease, and later to a posting in a country that stopped being the Soviet Union three months after I arrived. I spent much of the early 1990s in smoky taxis in the Caucasus mountains, covering a series of small post-Soviet conflicts that built up to the war in Chechnya. As a journalist I’ve written for, among others, The Times and its website, the Los Angeles Times, Prospect, the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian Saturday magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, Eve magazine, The Observer Food Monthly and The Erotic Review. I’ve written six books: four historical novels and two non-fiction books about my experiences as a journalist.
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Posted on October 19, 2003 by The Orwell Prize -
Brian Sewell began his career having graduated from Courtauld Institute, London University. He has worked for The Royal Academy, The British Council, The Arts Council and the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. He has also written many exhibition catalogues for the Royal Academy and Council of Europe. Since 1984, he has been the Art Critic for the Evening Standard and has won the award for ‘Art Critic of the Year’ on several occasions. For ten years, Brian worked as an Expert in Old Masters for Christie’s. He has advised a number of Museums on purchases and the improvement of collections and has taught in a number of universities. Brian is known as an experienced broadcaster and has contributed to programmes for both radio and television, including various commercials. He has appeared on programmes ranging from Have I Got News for You, The Antique Show, The Great Antiques Hunt, Call My Bluff, The Naked Pilgrim and numerous programmes about art.
Posted on October 19, 2002 by The Orwell Prize -
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown came to this country in 1972 from Uganda. She completed her M.Phil. in literature at Oxford in 1975. She is a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Observer, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Daily Mail and other newspapers and is now a regular columnist on The Independent and London’s Evening Standard. She is also a radio and television broadcaster and author of several books. Her book, No Place Like Home, was an autobiographical account of a twice removed immigrant. From 1996 to 2001 she was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research which published True Colours on the role of government on racial attitudes. Tony Blair launched the book in March 1999. She is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre. In 2000 she published, Who Do We Think We Are? which went on to be published in the US too, an acclaimed book on the state of the nation. After Multiculturalism, a pamphlet re-assessing the multicultural ideology in Britain was the first critical examination by a social democrat of a settled and now damaging orthodoxy. In 2001 came the publication of Mixed Feelings, a book on mixed race Britons. Her most recent book is The Settler’s Cookbook (2009).
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Posted on October 19, 2001 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Independent. David Aaronovitch is a writer, broadcaster and commentator on culture, international affairs, politics and the media. His regular column appears every Thursday in The Times. A former television researcher, producer and programme editor, he has previously written for The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer, winning numerous accolades, including Columnist of the Year 2003. He has appeared on the satirical TV current affairs programme Have I Got News For You, presented a number of radio and television series and programmes on current affairs and historical topics. His first book, and account of a journey by kayak on the rivers and canals of England, Paddling to Jerusalem, was published in 2000 and won the Madoc Prize for travel writing. In 2009 he published Voodoo Histories, a book on the history and attraction of conspiracy theories.
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Posted on October 19, 2000 by The Orwell Prize -
David began his career as a reporter for the East Antrim Times. He joined the Irish Times in 1973 as a reporter in Belfast, becoming Northern editor in 1976 and London editor in 1981. He worked briefly for BBC Northern Ireland, 1985-6, before joining the The Independent (London) in 1986; he has since worked as the paper’s Irish correspondent. Widely recognised for the scope of his knowledge and the balance of his reporting on Northern Ireland, he contributes regularly to overseas newspapers and journals. His many awards include the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for the promotion of peace and understanding in Northern Ireland, 1989 and 2001; and Correspondent of the Year, 1999.
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Posted on October 19, 1999 by The Orwell Prize -
Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, is the author of Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. He holds numerous awards for journalism, including two Amnesty International UK Press Awards and seven British International Journalist of the Year awards. His other books include The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster; In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45; and The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East.
Posted on October 19, 1998 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Independent. Polly Toynbee is a political and social commentator for The Guardian. She was the Social Affairs Editor at the BBC, and has worked for The Observer, The Independent and The Washington Monthly. Her books include: A Working Life, a study of unskilled work; Hospital, a study of the NHS; Lost Children: Story of Adopted Children Searching for Their Mothers; and, more recently, Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain. Together with David Walker she has written Did Things Get Better?: An Audit of Labour’s Successes and Failures, Better or Worse?: Has Labour Delivered?, Unjust Rewards and The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? As well as the Orwell Prize, she has won Columnist of the Year at the National Press Awards and the Political Studies Association’s Political Journalist of the Year award. She is president of the Social Policy Association, and Chair of the Brighton and Hove Arts Festival. She is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and sits on the board of the Political Quarterly. She has four children and lives in Lambeth.
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Posted on October 19, 1997 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Scotsman. Ian Bell was born in Edinburgh and has always lived in Scotland. A columnist on The Herald, he has also worked for The Scotsman, the Daily Record, and the TLS.
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Posted on October 19, 1996 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Observer. Melanie Phillips is a journalist and writer whose column currently appears in the Daily Mail. She joined the Evening Echo in Hemel Hampstead after reading English at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and from there moved to The Guardian, via the New Society magazine. After a period as the paper’s news editor, she began writing her column in 1987, taking it to The Observer and the Sunday Times before joining the Daily Mail in 2001. She was one of the first British media figures to start a blog in 2003, moving it to The Spectator website in 2007. Her books include All Must Have Prizes, a critique of Britain’s education system; The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the Social Market Foundation; America’s Social Revolution, published by Civitas; The Ascent of Woman, a history of the ideas behind the female suffrage campaign, published by Little, Brown; and Londonistan, a bestseller in 2006. Her most recent book is The World Turned Upside Down. She also wrote a play, Traitors, which was performed at the Drill Hall in London in 1985.
Posted on October 19, 1995 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for a special report in Private Eye: Not the Scott Report – Thatcher, Major and the Merchants of Death. Paul Foot (1937-2004) was a pioneering investigative journalist who worked for Private Eye, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian. He exposed the Poulson scandal, stood by the Bridgewater Four who were released 18 years after their wrongful conviction in 1978, and wrote a well-received critique on the Private Finance Initiative for Private Eye only a few weeks before his death. A former columnist for the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, Foot was well-known for his socialist views and attacks on Thatcherism, and was a founder member of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Since 2005, the Paul Foot Award has been awarded by Private Eye and The Guardian for investigative or campaigning journalism. Tim Laxton was a journalist, working as an investigative reporter for The Economist from 1998. In June 2007, he joined the investment-management organisation, AKO Capital LLP.
Posted on October 19, 1994 by The Orwell Prize -
Won for journalism published by The Independent on Sunday. Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and writer who has written for The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. Educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he was described by Eric Hobsbawm as ‘perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn’t really teach him much, I just let him get on with it.’ Despite offers to become an academic, Ascherson declined and moved into journalism instead. His books include The King Incorporated (1963), The Polish August (1981), The Nazi Legacy (1985), The Struggles for Poland (1987), Games With Shadows (1988), Black Sea (1995) and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (2002).