The Orwell Foundation is a charity registered in England and Wales, the aim of which is "to perpetuate the achievements of the British writer George Orwell (1903–1950)". The Foundation runs the Orwell Prize, the UK's most prestigious prize for political writing. In addition to the Prizes, the Orwell Foundation also runs free public events, debates and lectures and provides free online resources by and about Orwell. Since 2014, they have also run "Unreported Britain". The Orwell Youth Prize, a separate charity, work with young people aged 12–18 around the UK. The Orwell Youth Prize organises writing workshops for young people and runs a writing prize, culminating in an annual Celebration Day. The foundation is based at University College London, and is a registered charity no. 1161563.
Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize, established in 1994, is an annual award recognising and rewarding the books and journalism that come closest to realizing Orwell's ambition to "make political writing into an art". Between 2009 and 2012, a third prize was awarded for blogging, and in 2015, The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils was launched. For more information, including past shortlists and winners, see the separate Orwell Prize page.
Unreported Britain The Foundations "Unreported Britain" initiative was started with the aim of finding stories that are otherwise ignored from communities whose voices are unheard, and giving them platform, profile and leverage.
Lectures and debates The Orwell Foundation organises free public lectures and debates. There are currently two annual Orwell Lectures: the Orwell Lecture at University College London and, from 2017, the Orwell Lecture in the North at the University of Sheffield.
Previous Orwell Lectures 1989: "Big Brother, Big Sister and Today's Media" – Bruce Kent 1990: "Must Revolutions Fail?" – Sir Ralf Dahrendorf 1991: "Fiction and Agnosticism" – Penelope Lively 1992: "Socialist Values" – Robin Cook 1993: "Changing the Legal Culture" – Helena Kennedy 1994: "But is it Socialism?" – Roy Hattersley 1995: "Risk" – Anthony Giddens 1996: "The Ministry of Agriculture: The Ministry of Truth" – Richard Lacey 1997: "Inside the Whale: the Relationship between the State and the Individual" – Frank Field 1998: "Orwell's 'little list'" – Peter Davison 1999: "The English Problem: National Identity and Citizenship" – Sir Bernard Crick 2000: "Nation, State and Globalisation" – Martin Wolf 2001: "House of Memory and London's Orbital Motorway" – Iain Sinclair 2002: Patrick Wright 2003: "From Authority to Celebrity – Intellectuals in Modern Britain" – Stefan Collini 2004: "Just Law: The changing fact of justice and why it matters" – Helena Kennedy 2005: "Projections of the inner 'I': George Orwell's Fiction" – D.J. Taylor 2006: "Homo Brittanicus, Soctophobia and All That" – Neal Ascherson 2007: "The Politics of Response – Orwell's contribution to the questions of how we read and what reading is for" – Michael Rosen 2008: "The English" – Andrew O'Hagan 2009: "'More like a castle than a realm': Thomas Cromwell's Radical England" – Hilary Mantel 2010: "Orwell and the Oligarchs" – Ferdinand Mount 2011: "Hacking away at the truth: an investigation and its consequences" – Alan Rusbridger 2012: "Secrets of the Cuban Missile Crisis" – Christopher Andrew 2013: "Democratising the Middle East: A New Role for the West" – Tariq Ramadan 2014: "'Whatever Happened to Social Mobility'" – David Kynaston 2015: "War, Words and Reason: Orwell and Thomas Merton on the Crises of Language" – Dr Rowan Williams 2016: "The Right to Dissent (and the Left too)" – Ian Hislop 2017: "Orwell with women" – A. L. Kennedy 2017: "Nationalism should not be confused with patriotism – Our Divided Politics" – Ruth Davidson (The Orwell Prize Shortlist Lecture) 2018: "Unbecoming British: Citizenship, Migration and the Transformation of Rights into Privileges" – Kamila Shamsie 2019: "How To Predict An Election" - Daniel Finkelstein 2020: "Decolonising the Wonder House: Orwell, Empire and the Museum" - Dr Tristram Hunt 2021: "Politics and the Imagination: Reflection's on Orwell's Inside the Whale" - Ian McEwan 2022: "Wigan, the World and Everywhere In Between: How We Build a Country That Works" - Lisa Nandy MP 2025: Victoria Amelina - Looking at Women, Looking at War ; Donal Ryan - Heart Be at Peace (Doubleday) Jenny Kleeman - Journalism
Previous Orwell Lecture in the North 2017: "I've read all the academic texts on empathy" – Grayson Perry"The Orwell Lecture in the North 2017: Grayson Perry", The Orwell Foundation. Accessed 8 January 2017.
Orwell's legacy The foundation also organises events and anniversary celebrations about George Orwell.
As the only website authorised by the Orwell Estate, the foundation also publishes online resources by and about Orwell.
Orwell Youth Prize The Orwell Youth Prize works with young people aged 12–18
Orwell Daily Orwell Daily is a new way to read one of the world's greatest writers. It is curated by The Orwell Foundation and comes with an official stamp of approval from the Orwell Estate. It is published on the Substack platform.Orwell Daily. Orwell Foundation.
References
External links Official website