Orwell Prize

The Orwell Prizes reward the books and journalism that best match George Orwell's hope that writing about politics could be an art. The book prize was founded in 1994 by Sir Bernard Crick, Orwell's first biographer, who funded it with royalties from his life of Orwell, and it is now run by the Orwell Foundation, a charity based at University College London. The first book winner was Anatol Lieven's The Baltic Revolution.

Until 2018 a single book prize covered both fiction and nonfiction. Since 2019 there have been two: the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, for nonfiction first published in the UK or Ireland, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Political is read broadly to take in social, cultural, moral and historical subjects, and entries are weighed equally on style and substance. A separate panel judges each prize every year, and winners are announced in late June, near Orwell's birthday on June 25. The foundation also gives prizes for journalism and for reporting on homelessness.

Books on political themes in the broad sense, first published in the UK or Ireland during the prize year, judged in separate nonfiction (Political Writing) and fiction (Political Fiction) categories.