The Orwell Prize 2012 is now open for submissions, with Book Prize judges author Miranda Carter and journalist Sameer Rahim confirmed.

Carter won the Orwell Prize for Books 2002 for Anthony Blunt: His Lives (Pan Macmillan); Rahim is the assistant books editor on the Telegraph, and a third judge will be announced...

The late lord chief justice Tom Bingham has been awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing for his book The Rule of Law (Penguin). Bingham, a former master of the rolls, lord chief justice, and senior law lord, died in September 2010. His award was presented to Lady Bingham of Cornhill yesterday evening (17th May).

The...

Two fiction débuts have made the "well-cooked" 18-strong list for the Orwell Prize for political writing, after last year's lists featured none.

Brian Chikwava's novel Harare North (Jonathan Cape) and Petina Gappah's Guardian First Book Prize-winning collection Elegy for Easterly (...

Does anyone who isn't dead from the neck up doubt that there's a bad time coming? We don't even know what it'll be, and yet we know it's coming.  Perhaps a war, perhaps a slump —no knowing, except that it'll be something bad. Wherever we're going, we're going downwards.  Into the grave, into the cesspool—no knowing....