Miranda is a writer and biographer who won the Orwell Prize for Books 2002 forAnthony Blunt: His Lives. Her latest book is The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires and the Road to World War One (2009).
Miranda Carter
Archives: JudgesTTTT
David Allen Green
David Allen Green is a writer, lawyer and head of media at City law firm Preiskel & Co. His blog, Jack of Kent, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Blogs in 2010 and longlisted for the same prize in 2012. David regularly writes for the New Statesman, and has been published in The Guardian, The Lawyer and New Scientist. He sits on the advisory council for Sense About Science and the editorial advisory board for The Skeptic magazine.
Gaby Hinsliff
Gaby Hinsliff is journalist and former political editor of the Observer. In January 2012 her first book, Half a Wife: The Working Family’s Guide to Getting a Life Back, was published . Hinsliff writes a blog and has a column in Grazia magazine where she discusses women’s political issues.
Will Skidelsky
William Skidelsky is Books Editor for The Observer. His writing focus is split between literature and food. In 2008 he wrote a pocket-size guide book Gourmet London. Previously Skidelsky worked as Deputy Editor of Prospect magazine and Literary Editor for the New Statesman where he also had a food column.
Martin Bright
Martin Bright began his journalistic career writing in very simple English for a magazine aimed at French school children. This experience has informed his style ever since. He worked for the BBC World Service, and The Guardianbefore joining The Observer as Education Correspondent. He went on to become Home Affairs Editor before becoming the New Statesman’s political editor in 2005 and his work was shortlisted for the 2007 Orwell Prize for Journalism. He left theNew Statesman in January 2009, and started blogging on Spectator.co.uk. He was appointed political editor of the Jewish Chronicle in August 2009. Martin is the founder of New Deal of the Mind.
Ursula Owen
Ursula Owen is the co-founder and director of women’s publishers Virago Press. After Virago she became policy adviser for the Labour Party during the 1992 election. A year later she joined Index on Censorship as Editor in Chief where she revitalised the quarterly magazine. Ursula was project director for theFree Word Centre from 2003-2009. She is a founder trustee of Free Word and was awarded an OBE in 2003. Ursula is on the board of the South Bank Centre and English Touring Opera. She has been a governor of Parliament Hill Field School, on the board of the New Statesman and the committee of the Royal Literary Fund. She is the author of Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.
Michela Wrong
Michela Wrong was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Books twice; for I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation in 2006 and It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower in 2010. She read Philosophy and Social Sciences at Cambridge, and after graduation she worked for Reuters. During her six years at the news agency, she worked as a foreign correspondent in France, Italy and Ivory Coast. She has also worked as a journalist for the BBC and Financial Times. In 2000, her first book In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo won the PEN prize for non-fiction.
Jim Naughtie
James Naughtie has been a Radio 4 presenter since 1994. Before joining the BBC, Jim worked for The Aberdeen Press & Journal, The Washington Post and served as Chief Political Correspondent at both The Guardian and The Scotsman. He has written books including The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency.
Richard Horton
After winning the first-ever Orwell Prize for Blogs, the author of the NightJack blog was revealed to be Richard Horton by The Times following a landmark High Court ruling, The Author of a Blog vs Times Newspapers Limited. It later emerged that his email account had been hacked before Horton’s identity was exposed. The blog documented Richard’s everyday work as a police officer and posts ranged from light-hearted commentary on police uniforms to candid accounts of the pursuit of rapists.
Oona King
Oona King is a writer, broadcaster and political campaigner. Oona started her career as a trade union organiser, before being elected as Labour MP for Bethnal Green & Bow in 1997. She remained as an MP until losing her seat in 2005 and is now a member of the House of Lords. Oona is a long-standing campaigner for cultural diversity and disability equality; she is currently Chief Diversity Officer for Channel 4, and has previously served as Equalities and Diversity adviser to 10 Downing Street. Her political diary House Music was published by Bloomsbury in 2007.
Peter Kellner
Peter Kellner is an award-winning journalist, political commentator and President of YouGov opinion polling. Although holding MA in Economics and Statistics from Cambridge University, Peter proclaims his parents taught him that “Politics isn’t just about data collection and tables and regression analysis, it’s about justice, about truth and about liberty.” Before joining YouGov, Peter worked as political editor for the New Statesman, opinion poll analyst for The Sunday Times and political analyst for the BBC’s Newsnight. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire in 1997. Peter is the author ofThorns and Roses: Speeches of Neil Kinnock, 1983-91, Democracy: 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty and with Christopher Hitchens Callaghan: The Road to Number 10.
Roger Graef
Roger Graef OBE is a film-maker, criminologist and writer. He began his film career directing plays at Harvard University going on to found the award-winningFilms of Record television production company in 1979. He is an avid campaigner for reform of the justice system and is a visiting professor at numerous universities including the London School of Economics. Graef has written three books on crime and justice; Living Dangerously: Young Offenders in Their Own Words, Talking Blues: Police in their own words and Why Restorative Justice?: Repairing the Harm Caused by Crime. He is chair of theMedia Standards Trust.
Francine Stock
Francine began her journalism career as a specialist reporter in the oil industry. In 1983 she joined the BBC to produce The World at One, PM and the World This Weekend, where she rose through the ranks, presenting programmes such as Newsnight and The Money Programme. Stock pursues an interest in film and is author of In Glorious Technicolour where she discusses how film has shaped culture. She currently presents The Film Programme for Radio 4 and served as chair of the Tate Members’ Council until 2010.
Andrew Holgate
Andrew is Literary Editor of The Sunday Times.
Jonathan Heawood
Jonathan studied an MPhil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and a PhD on 17th century Closet Drama. He went on to be Deputy Literary Editor for The Observer then moved to the Fabian Society as Editorial Director where he published numerous political books and oversaw the editing of the Fabian Review. He then worked as Director of the literature and free speech organisation English PEN where he championed reform of the English libel laws. His passion for Orwell led him to write introduction to Orwell: The Observer Years.
Annalena McAfee
Journalist and author Annalena McAfee has worked in regional and national newspapers for three decades. She was arts and literary editor of the Financial Times and founded the Guardian Review, which she edited for five years. She has also written and published eight books for children and edited Lives and Works: Profiles of Contemporary Writers.
Dame Jenny Abramsky
Jenny Abramsky DBE began her 39-year-long career at the BBC in 1969 as a programme operations assistant, where she would become one of the most influential women in radio. She rose through the ranks serving as editor of Radio 4’s Today, World at One and PM programmes. In 1994 she became founding controller of Radio 5 Live before moving to the BBC’s continuous news department, where she launched BBC News 24 three years later. In 2008 Jenny left the BBC to become chair of the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
Ian Jack
Award-winning journalist Ian Jack began his career in the 1960s, working for various Scottish newspapers. In the 70s, he moved to The Sunday Times, where was a reporter, foreign correspondent, feature writer and editor. Ian is a co-founder of The Independent on Sunday which he edited from 1991 to 1995. He went on to edit literary magazine Granta, where he remained until 2007. He is author of The Country Formally Known as Great Britain. Ian currently holds a weekly column at The Guardian and teaches an MA at Kings College London.