The Orwell Prize
‘What I have most wanted to do... is to make political writing into an art’
About Orwell
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The Orwell Foundation uses the work of George Orwell to celebrate honest writing and reporting, to uncover hidden lives, to confront uncomfortable truths and, in doing so, to promote Orwell’s values of integrity, decency and fidelity to truth.

The Orwell Prize 2017

Each Prize year features five ‘milestones’: launch and opening of submissions; closing of submissions; longlist announcement; shortlist announcement and awards ceremony.
The next few milestones are listed below and the count down timer is for the next important one. Make sure you check our upcoming free events and come along!

Shortlist announcement

Longlists

Key dates

Judges

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News and events

News

Twitter

Also coming to read #1984live next week: @CCriadoPerez @danielfyork (remember it's free and live-streamed) orwellfoundation.com/1984live

Yesterday from The Orwell Prize's Twitter via TweetDeck

Events

1984 Live

Tuesday 06 June 2017

All day

Hear 1984 read by a host of actors, writers, journalists and members of the public over the course of a single day

The Orwell Prize 2016 winners

   Book prize   

The Invention of Russia

Arkady Ostrovsky

Journalism prize

Gideon Rachman

Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist

Financial Times

Iona Craig

Freelance journalist

various

Exposing Britian's   
   Social Evils

Previous winners The Orwell Prize 2016 Ceremony

The Orwell Youth Prize

Inspired by its own ‘Big Brother’, Britain’s most prestigious Prize for political writing, the Orwell Youth Prize aims to support and inspire a new generation of politically engaged young writers.

Unreported Britain

Together with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), we are delivering the Unreported Britain Project as one part of the work of the new JRF-sponsored Prize The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils”

Orwell resources

A library of works about George Orwell and his work including some exclusive material and links to external Orwell content.

Selected examples
SEE ALL ORWELL BOOKS

Sponsors & Partner

The Orwell Foundation is extremely grateful to its sponsors and partner. If you would to find out more about supporting the prize, please contact us.

Orwell values

When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

George Orwell
2016-04-04T10:15:07+00:00

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings.

George Orwell
The Prevention of Literature

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:29:50+00:00

George Orwell
The Prevention of Literature

Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings.
To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:24:33+00:00

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

George Orwell
Why I Write

George Orwell
2016-04-03T22:33:10+00:00

George Orwell
Why I Write

Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.
Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face… If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

George Orwell
2016-04-04T10:15:57+00:00

George Orwell
Proposed Preface to Animal Farm

Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face… If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

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