The Orwell Prize. Winners. Shortlists. News.

The Orwell Prize is the pre-eminent British prize for political writing. There are two annual awards: a Book Prize and a Journalism Prize. They are awarded to the book, and for the journalism, which is judged to have best achieved George Orwell’s aim to ‘make political writing into an art’. Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Orwell’s incomparable essays still resonate around the world as peerless examples of courageous independence of mind, steely analysis and beautiful writing.

The prizes are intended to encourage writing and thinking in this tradition. Clear, elegant expression, original ideas and hard argument about political issues that communicate to a wide audience are looked for. Style matters and content matters. The definition of politics is broad, and can include political and moral dilemmas, ideas and history, as well as issues in public policy, social and cultural concerns, in both fiction and non-fiction. The ambition of the prizes is to reward, celebrate and promote work that helps nurture the discussion of politics and that contributes to the quality of public life.

For the first time in 2007, broadcast and film journalism as well as internet publications were included in the scope of the prize.

The judges ask only that ‘writing must be of a kind that is aimed at or accessible to the public, and submissions will be judged equally for the excellence of their style and the originality of their content’.

The prize was founded by Sir Bernard Crick in 1993, using money from the royalties of the hardback edition of his biography of Orwell. Its sponsors are Richard Blair, the adopted son of Orwell, Reuters, The Political Quarterly, Blackwell Publishing, Media Standards Trust, and A. M. Heath & Company.

2008 Winner Book Prize

Raja Shehadeh – Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
240 pages,

Raja Shehadeh navigates recent Palestinian history by walking from Ayn Kenya to the Shukba Caves, the Ramallah hills and the Dead Sea.

Raja Shehadeh is the author of the When the Bulbul Stopped Singing and Strangers in the House. He is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is a founder of the human rights organisation, Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East.

The 2008 Other Shortlisted

Nick Cohen – What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way
256 pages, Harper Perennial

Nick Cohen argues that the liberal-Left of the 20th century has lost its way. So much so that, Cohen suggests, it now shares some of its political views with the 21st century far Right.

Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and New Statesman. He does occasional pieces for many other publications, including the London Evening Standard and New Humanist. Cruel Britannia, a collection of his journalism, was published by Verso in 1999, and Pretty Straight Guys, a history of Britain under Tony Blair, was published by Faber in 2003.

Jay Griffiths – Wild: An Elemental Journey
384 pages, Hamish Hamilton

Jay Griffiths describes her journeys to wildernesses of earth, ice, water and fire in order to explore the words and meanings which shape our ideas and our experience of our own wildness.

Jay Griffiths' writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the Observer, The Ecologist and Resurgence magazine.

William Hague – William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner
592 pages, Harper Press

William Hague's account of William Wilberforce's turbulent life and career, from the politician's birth in Yorkshire in 1759 through his 20-year-campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, to its final enactment as he lay dying in 1833.

William Hague is Conservative MP for Richmond (Yorks) and Shadow Foreign Secretary. His previous book, William Pitt the Younger, was published in 2004.

Ed Husain – The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
304 pages, Penguin

Ed Husain's autobiographical exploration of why young British Muslims are turning to extremism. Husain describes his own experiences inside extremist groups, the reasons he joined them and why he left.

Ed Husain was born, raised, and educated in London. He has lived and travelled extensively in the Middle East and worked for the British Council in Damascus and Jeddah. He is conducting doctoral research on Arab experiences of secularism, and is deputy director of the Muslim think-tank, The Quilliam Foundation.

Marina Lewycka – Two Caravans
320 pages, Fig Tree

Marina Lewycka's novel tells the story of Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese and Malawian strawberry pickers, living in two caravans in the English countryside.

Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. Her first novel is the bestselling A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005).

Read the first chapter here Two Caravans
Watch an exclusive interview An interview with Marina Lewycka, author of 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' and 'Two Caravans', shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2008.

Clive Stafford Smith – Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons
320 pages, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Clive Stafford Smith's first hand account of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners.

Stafford Smith is a human-rights lawyer who has spent the last twenty years in the United States representing prisoners on Death Row. His clients include many detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He established the London-based human rights charity Reprieve in 1999.

Book Prize Shortlist 2008

Nick Cohen What's Left?
Jay Griffiths Wild
William Hague William Wilberforce
Ed Husain The Islamist
Marina Lewycka Two Caravans
Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks
Clive Stafford Smith Bad Men

Journalism Prize Shortlist 2008

Johann Hari The Independent- Winner
Clive James BBC Radio 4
Anton La Guardia The Economist
Andrew Rawnsley The Observer
Mary Riddell The Observer
Paul Vallely The Independent

Previous Winners

Book Prize

1994 Anatol Lieven The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence
1995 Fionnuala O'Connor In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland
1996 Fergal Keane Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
1997 Peter Godwin Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
1998 Patricia Hollis Jennie Lee: A Life
1999 D. M. Thomas Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life
2000 Brian Cathcart The Case of Stephen Lawrence
2001 Michael Ignatieff Virtual War
2002 Miranda Carter Anthony Blunt: His Lives
2003 Francis Wheen Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism 1991-2000
2004 Robert Cooper The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty First Century
2005 Michael Collins The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class
2006 Delia Jarrett-Macauley Moses, Citizen and Me
2007 Peter Hennessy Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s
2008 Raja Shehadeh Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

Journalism Prize

1994 Neal Ascherson
1995 Paul Foot and Tim Laxton
1996 Melanie Phillips
1997 Ian Bell
1998 Polly Toynbee
1999 Robert Fisk
2000 David McKittrick
2001 David Aaronovitch
2002 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
2003 Brian Sewell
2004 Vanora Bennett
2005 Matthew Parris
2006 Timothy Garton Ash
2007 Peter Beaumont
2008 Johann Hari