Third Party Event: Orwell Prize Launch with Panel Debate on ‘Orwell, ID Cards, the Citizen and the State’

Talk 30 November 2007

Orwell Prize Launch with Panel Debate on ‘Orwell, ID Cards, the Citizen and the State’

David Goodhart (Editor, Prospect Magazine), Nick Cohen (journalist and author) and Heather Brooke (journalist and author of Your Right to Know)

Chaired by Jean Seaton (Professor of Media History, University of Westminster and Chair of Judges, The Orwell Prize)

‘What I have most wanted to do…is to make political writing into an art.’

The Orwell Prize, the pre-eminent British prize for political writing, is celebrating the launch of the Orwell Prize 2008 with a discussion on ‘Orwell, ID Cards, the Citizen and the State’ with three eminent speakers.

The launch and invitation of entries will be accompanied by the unveiling of a new website, and the announcement of some exciting changes to the award.

The discussion promises to be entertaining and challenging – very much in the spirit Orwell intended.

The Orwell Prize consists of 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 London and Paris, 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 winners of the 2008 Prize will be announced in April 2008.

For further information, please contact The Orwell Prize administrator: gavin.freeguard@mediastandardstrust.org