THE ORWELL PRIZE: VIDEO FROM THE OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL

From the Orwell Prize newsletter

We took two events to this year’s Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, and videos of both are now available on our website and YouTube Channel.

On Sunday, we held an Orwell vs Kipling debate, 75 years after Kipling’s death. Orwell wrote a brief obituary and a much longer essay on Kipling, and paid homage to him on his journey to Wigan Pier. Paul Anderson (journalist, editor of Orwell in Tribune) and Sarah Bakewell (Orwell fan, award-winning author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne) argued for Orwell, against Charles Allen (Orwell Prize-longlisted for Kipling, Sahib) and Andrew Lycett(biographer, author of Rudyard Kipling and editor of Kipling Abroad) for Kipling. You can watch the very entertaining debate by clicking here.

On Tuesday, Sir Mark Jones (director of the V&A Museum) and Karen Freyer (managing director of New Deal of the Mind) answered the question, ‘does it make a difference who funds the arts?’, chaired by our director, Jean Seaton. Video of the wide-ranging discussion can be found here.

  

ORWELL PRIZE 2011: LONGLIST AND SHORTLIST

For the first time, we held an event (kindly hosted by Preiskel & Co) to mark this year’s longlist announcement.

The video of the announcement – and of a great discussion about blogging, with former winner Jack Night (Richard Horton, judge of last year’s Blog Prize) and previously shortlisted Jack of Kent (David Allen Green, one of this year’s Blog Prize judges) – is now online, on our website and YouTube Channel.

Full details of this year’s longlists are on our website, including links to all of the longlisted journalism and blogposts, and extracts from some of the longlisted books (with more to follow).

The shortlists will be announced at a debate, ‘is it time to make monarchy history?’, hosted by Thomson Reuters on 26^th April 2011 (drinks from 6.30, announcement and debate from 7). Full details to come shortly, but if you’d like to reserve a place, email gavin.freeguard@mediastandardstrust.org.

LONDON WORD FESTIVAL

This Tuesday 12^th April, the excellent London Word Festival are organising an event inspired by Orwell’s Books vs Cigarettes (featuring Robin Ince, Stuart Evers, John-Luke Roberts, Matthew Crosby, Joanna Neary, Rich Sandling, Martin Austwick and Ben Moor). Starting at 7pm at Dalston Boys’ Club, the event will also have:

• An exhibition of some of Aleks Krotoski’s 1984 photographs – Aleks took photos of the first 369 words of 1984 and posted roughly one a day during 2010. You can see the full set online on her flickr stream, while there’s more on 1984 on our website
• ‘Gorge Orwell’, a selection of cakes (and marmalade) from Orwell’s own recipes. Some of these are taken from Orwell’s 1946 essay on ‘British Cookery’ – read it on our website, or see the original manuscript on our flickr stream.

You can book tickets on the Festival’s website, and you can read Orwell’s ‘Books vs Cigarettes’ essay on ours.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Given that we’ve been in Oxford this week with Orwell vs Kipling, it might be worth revisiting some of our previous Orwell-related events at the festival. Last year, biographers D. J. Taylor and Paula Byrne looked at the differences and similarities between Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, while in 2009 Taylor interviewed Orwell’s son, Richard Blair. 2009 also saw the first of our Orwell vs Dickens debates, featuring Philip Hensher, Jenny Hartley, Jean Seaton and Hardeep Singh Kohli, chaired by Francine Stock. Our second Orwell vs Dickens pitted Davids Aaronovitch and Taylor against Lucinda Hawksley and Michael Slater, chaired by Dame Janet Smith at the Buxton Festival 2010.

Videos of many more of our previous events are available in the ‘Past Events’ section of our website.

FROM ELSEWHERE

• Blog Prize judge David Allen Green gives a helpful overview of this year’s longlist
• Previous Blog Prize winner, Winston Smith, is to have his book, Generation F, published by Monday Books at the end of the month – read more about it on Monday’s website
• Pseudonymous journalist and author, Emma Larkin, writes for Finlay Publisher on ‘Being Eric/Being George: Or, What it’s Really Like to Become Someone Else'. There’s more from Emma in our Burmese Days section
• Longlisted Andrew Sparrow, Amelia Gentleman and David Cohen (‘The Dispossessed’) won at the British Press Awards
• Longlisted blogger Crispian Jago does Spotify Sunday for the Spectator’s Night and Day blog

THE WIGAN PIER DIARIES

The final entry was published on 25^th March.

In addition to the blog, we have a Google Map tracking Orwell’s journey, a flickr set of archive images, and our page on The Road to Wigan Pier, with the first chapter and other links. 

THE WARTIME DIARIES

This week, entries were published on 7^th and 8^th April.

Over the next week, entries will be published on 9^th, 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 14^th and 15^th April.