The Bookseller.com

6th July 2009

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Orwell trebles prize money

04.12.07 Alison Flood

The Orwell Prize has trebled its prize money for next year and is launching a new website. Submissions are now open for the political award, which rewards the book and the journalist judged to have best achieved George Orwell's aim to "make political writing into an art".

Prize money for both the journalism and the book award has trebled next year, from £1000 to £3000, after sponsorship from The Political Quarterly and Orwell's son Richard Blair. For the first time, the Prize is being administered in partnership with the Media Standards Trust.

The judges for 2008 will be Annalena McAfee, journalist, author and founder of Guardian Review; John Tusa, former journalist and head of the BBC World Service and now chairman of the V&A Museum; and Albert "Al" Scardino, former executive editor of the Guardian. Professor Jean Seaton, professor of media history at the University of Westminster, is chair of the Judges.

A new website, www.theorwellprize.co.uk, has also been launched.

Seaton said: "We may not live in 1984 but we live in a society where doublespeak corrupts public understanding, nationally and internationally and Big Brother still haunts us. Orwell's austerity and radicalism are as relevant as ever."

Orwell Prize Prize Alison Flood