Read all the winning stories from the five winners at this year’s Orwell Prize, awarded last night
This year, for the first time in its history, The Orwell Prize has awarded four prizes, adding an inaugural Prize for Political Fiction to the three annual prizes for journalism, political writing and exposing Britain’s social evils.
There were two winners in the journalism category this year, whose work was described by judges as “incisive, relevant and human”.
Suzanne Moore won for her columns in The Guardian which considered attitudes to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the wake of the #metoo movement, why she decided she was wrong to refuse to wear a poppy for Remembrance Sunday, and why she didn’t take part in the march for a People’s Vote.
Steve Bloomfield, deputy editor of Prospect Magazine won for his report on the Foreign Office’s failure to prepare for Brexit, a profile of Jeremy Corbyn and a piece on American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
The winner of The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils was Max Daly, global drugs editor at Vice for a series of stories about the UK drug trade and its impact on children and young people. He investigated disappearances of young people who are exploited by criminal gangs, the rise of gang-related violence in country areas, and street killings in London.
This year’s two winning books were both about the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The Orwell Prize for Political Writing went to American writer and New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe for Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. Find it here.
Judge Ted Hodgkinson said: “This haunting and timely portrait of the Troubles opens with the disappearance of a mother of ten and radiates outwards to encompass the entire conflict, giving voice to characters and stories often shrouded in silence, and leaving an indelible and nuanced impression of the human cost of this unstable chapter of history.”
The inaugural Prize for Political Fiction went to Belfast-born author Anna Burns for her book, Milkman, which won last year’s Man Booker Prize. Find it here.
Chair of judges Tom Sutcliffe said: “Milkman is a remarkable book — recording a specific time and a specific conflict with brilliant precision but universal in its account of how political allegiances crush and deform our instinctive human loyalties. Its tone of voice — wry and funny, furious and compassionate — is a marvel.”
