Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Five prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism, one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012 and returning in 2026, a fifth prize was established in 2023 for reporting or commentary on homelessness. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".
In 2014, the Youth Orwell Prize was launched, targeted at school years 9 to 13 in order to "support and inspire a new generation of politically engaged young writers". In 2015, The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils, sponsored and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, was launched. In 2023, The Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness, sponsored by the Centre for Homelessness Impact, was launched.
The British political theorist Sir Bernard Crick founded The Orwell Prize in 1993, using money from the royalties of the hardback edition of his biography of Orwell. Its current sponsors are Orwell's son Richard Blair, The Political Quarterly, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Orwell Estate's literary agents, A. M. Heath. The Prize was formerly sponsored by the Media Standards Trust and Reuters. Bernard Crick remained chair of the judges until 2006; since 2007, the media historian Jean Seaton has been the Director of the Prize. Judging panels for all four prizes are appointed annually.
Winners and shortlists
Combined book category (1994–2018)
Beginning with 2019, the Book prize was split into fiction and non-fiction categories.| Year | Author | Title | Result | |
| 1994 | Winner | |||
| 1995 | In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland | Winner | ||
| 1996 | Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey | Winner | ||
| 1997 | Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa | Winner | ||
| 1998 | Jennie Lee: A Life | Winner | ||
| 1999 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life | Winner | ||
| 2000 | Winner | |||
| 2001 | Virtual War | Winner | ||
| 2002 | Anthony Blunt: His Lives | Winner | ||
| 2003 | Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism 1991–2000 | Winner | ||
| 2003 | Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in Politics | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation 1940-45 | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Winner | |||
| 2004 | Brick Lane | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Margaret Thatcher: Volume Two: The Iron Lady | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Rising ’44: The Battle For Warsaw | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Supping with the Devils: Political Journalism from Thatcher to Blair | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Winner | |||
| 2003 | Free World | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | Just Law | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism | Shortlist | ||
| 2003 | & Avishai Margalit | Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism | Shortlist | |
| 2003 | Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Moses, Citizen and Me | Winner | ||
| 2004 | Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Shortlist | |||
| 2004 | I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Frontline: The True Story of the British Mavericks Who Changed the Face of War Reporting | Shortlist | ||
| 2004 | Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s | Winner | ||
| 2007 | Thatcher and Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Lions, Donkeys And Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland | Shortlist | ||
| 2007 | Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape | Winner | ||
| 2008 | What's Left? | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | Wild | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | William Wilberforce | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | Shortlist | |||
| 2008 | Two Caravans | Shortlist | ||
| 2008 | Bad Men | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the future that disappeared | Winner | ||
| 2009 | Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia | Shortlist | ||
| 2009 | Shortlist | |||
| 2010 | Keeper | Winner | ||
| 2010 | Rebel Land: Among Turkey's Forgotten Peoples | Shortlist | ||
| 2010 | Shortlist | |||
| 2010 | Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty | Shortlist | ||
| 2010 | From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy | Shortlist | ||
| 2010 | t's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Winner | |||
| 2011 | Death to the Dictator!: Witnessing Iran's election and the Crippling of the Islamic Republic | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Hitch-22 | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan | Shortlist | ||
| 2011 | Shortlist | |||
| 2012 | Dead Men Risen | Winner | ||
| 2012 | DarkMarket: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You | Shortlist | ||
| 2012 | Hood Rat | Shortlist | ||
| 2012 | People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman | Shortlist | ||
| 2012 | Shortlist | |||
| 2012 | Shortlist | |||
| 2013 | Winner | |||
| 2013 | Burying the Typewriter | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | From the Ruins of the Empire | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | Injustice | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | Leaving Alexandria | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | Occupation Diaries | Shortlist | ||
| 2013 | On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood | Winner | ||
| 2014 | Coolie Woman | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | Not for Turning | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | Shortlist | |||
| 2014 | Shortlist | |||
| 2014 | Shortlist | |||
| 2015 | Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else | Winner | ||
| 2015 | Capital: The Eruption of Delhi | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | Modernity Britain: Opening the Box, 1957–1959 | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Winner | |||
| 2016 | Circling the Square | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Other People's Money | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee | Winner | ||
| 2017 | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Island Story: Journeys Around Unfamiliar Britain | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | And the Sun Shines Now: How Hillsborough and the Premier League Changed Britain | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Poverty Safari | Winner | ||
| 2018 | Shortlist | |||
| 2018 | Testosterone Rex | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | What You Did Not Tell | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Winter | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain | Shortlist |
Special prizes
In addition to the four regular prizes, the judges may choose to award a special prize.In 2007, BBC's Newsnight programme was given a special prize, 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.
In 2009, Tony Judt was given a lifetime achievement award.
In 2012, a posthumous award was made to Christopher Hitchens, his book Arguably having been longlisted that year.
In 2013, Marie Colvin received a special prize for On the Front Line. She had been killed earlier that year while on assignment in Homs, Syria.
In 2014, the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland was given a special award, after having been shortlisted for the Journalism Prize that year.
Controversy
In 2008 the winner in the Journalism category was Johann Hari. In July 2011 the Council of the Orwell Prize decided to revoke Hari's award and withdraw the prize. Public announcement was delayed as Hari was then under investigation by The Independent for professional misconduct. In September 2011 Hari announced that he was returning his prize "as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews", although he "stands by the articles that won the prize". A few weeks later, the Council of the Orwell Prize confirmed that Hari had returned the plaque but not the £2,000 prize money, and issued a statement that one of the articles submitted for the prize,, published by The Independent in April 2007, "contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story ".Hari did not initially return the prize money of £2,000. He later offered to repay the money, but Political Quarterly, responsible for paying the prize money in 2008, instead invited Hari to make a donation to English PEN, of which George Orwell was a member. Hari arranged with English PEN to make a donation equal to the value of the prize, to be paid in installments once Hari returned to work at The Independent. However, Hari did not return to work at The Independent.