Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole nominated for Orwell Prize

Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole has been nominated for the 2017 Orwell Prize for political journalism.

Writer Ruth Dudley Edwards has also been nominated for the Orwell Prize for books.

There are 14 nominations for each of the two awards following a year in which organisers noted “George Orwell’s name has returned to the heart of political discourse” amidst a wave of global political uncertainty.

There are also 12 entries long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Britain’s Social Evils.

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Most prestigious prizes

The Orwell awards are regarded as among Britain’s most prestigious prizes for political writing, and are intended to highlight work “which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’.”

O’Toole is nominated for his work in The Irish Times, the Guardian and the Observer.

Dudley Edwards is nominated for her book The Seven, an exploration of the men who signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on Easter Sunday, 1916, addressing the question of what their legacy should be a century after the fact.

Last year's journalism prize was awarded to Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. The book award was won by Arkady Ostrovsky for The Invention of Russia.