BUXTON FESTIVAL NEXT WEDNESDAY

 

A quick reminder that we’ll be at the Buxton Festival next Wednesday, asking the question ‘is politics corrupted by corrupted language?’, at 10.30am. Tickets are available from the Festival website.

 

The event is being held in the 65^th anniversary year of Orwell’s famous essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, and answering the question will be Nick Cohen (journalist and author, previously shortlisted for What’s Left?and longlisted for Waiting for the Etonians), Linda Grant (Orange Prize-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, books include the recent We Had It So Good) and Matthew Parris (journalist and former MP, winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2005, previously shortlisted for Chance Witness). Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust (one of our partners), will be in the chair.

 

Video of our previous events at Buxton – Andrea Gillies in conversation with her publisher Rebecca Nicolson, Andrew Brown in conversation with David Blunkett MP, a debate on Orwell vs Dickens, and a discussion on ‘what makes a good political novel?’ – can be found in our events archive.

 

JOHANN HARI

 

You may be aware of allegations made about the winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2008, Johann Hari. We made a statement about this last week, which you can read on our website.

 

FROM THE ARCHIVE AND ELSEWHERE 

• As the extraordinary News of the World phonehacking story continues to twist and turn, Orwell biographer DJ Taylor writes about the paper for The Independent – and mentions Orwell’s ‘Decline of the English Murder’, which you can read on our website
• Nick Davies, the journalist who has pursued the story for a number of years, was longlisted for his book Flat Earth News in 2009Flat Earth News in 2009
• Writer Seth Godin shortens Orwell’s six rules for writing – the original rules are from Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’

THE WARTIME DIARIES
 
Over the last two weeks, entries were published on 30th June and 3rd and 6th July.
 
The next entry will be published on 28th August.

 

THE WIGAN PIER DIARIES
 
The final entry was published on 25th March.