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About the Orwell Prize

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’.