The Orwell Prize 2015: Book Longlist

The Orwell Prize 2015 Longlists announced
announcement of March 25, 2015  from Orwell Prize website

Not an area I would often consider but I was taken with the wide range of subjects, authors and journalists from the heavier papers and journals that are being considered and their concern at casting a serious light on the current problems of society, albeit mostly in the UK.  Problems that Orwell would  been just as forthright about, as well as unsurprised at their (in many cases, continued) existence and that need of focus and attention.

Books, Journalists, and social reporting announced for Orwell Prize Longlist 2015

– Book Prize longlist includes four first-time authors as well as several established political writers
– Journalism Prize longlist includes Economist writer Rosie Blau and Middle East reporter David Gardner
– Prestigious new reporting prize longlist includes journalism on themes as diverse as London’s housing problems and the problem of loneliness amongst the elderly.

Longlists for the Orwell Prize 2015, Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing, were announced at 12pm today. From hundreds of entries, 12 books, 15 journalists, and 14 pieces of social reporting were chosen.
The judges for the 2015 Book Prize are Claire Armitstead, Gillian Slovo, and Tony Wright. The judges for the 2015 Journalism Prize are Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Stewart Purvis, and Caroline Thomson. The judges for the 2015 Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils are Anushka Asthana, Richard Sambrook, Nicholas Timmins, and Julia Unwin. The three £3000 prizes will be announced in a ceremony on 21st May 2015.

The director of the , Professor Jean Seaton, said: “We take journalism for granted as just part of our everyday experience. But when you sit down and read the journalism and political writing that has come in for the prize, it is so good that it is almost shocking. The new Joseph Rowntree Foundation-sponsored prize also shows just how journalism is evolving in tremendous new ways. The Book Prize longlist, meanwhile, offers a fabulous array of insights into our national and international situation: they are great books that together help analyse the world.”
Stewart Purvis, a judge for the 2015 Journalism Prize, said: “The entries provide an encouraging and rather reassuring snapshot of the writing talent currently at work across the U.K. I came away optimistic that journalism is flourishing in both old and new ways.”
Anushka Asthana, a judge for the 2015 Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils, said: “What each of these impressive long list entries achieved was to combine cutting edge investigative journalism with beautifully crafted storytelling – whether that be in print, on TV, or through innovative digital platforms.” Fellow judge Nick Timmins stated: “The entries showed that the issues remain live, but so does some excellent reporting of them – increasingly by using a mix of words and video, or graphics and analysis, in ways that blur the distinctions between print, broadcasting, and online.”

Orwell Book Prize 2015   longlist:
Jamie Bartlett, THE DARK NET (William Heinemann)
John Campbell, ROY JENKINS (Jonathan Cape)
Rana Dasgupta, CAPITAL: THE ERUPTION OF DELHI (Canongate)
Dan Davies, IN PLAIN SIGHT: THE LIFE AND LIES OF JIMMY SAVILE (Quercus)
Nick Davies, HACK ATTACK (Chatto & Windus)
Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin, REVOLT ON THE RIGHT (Routledge)
Zia Haider Rahman, IN THE LIGHT OF WHAT WE KNOW (Pan Macmillan)
David Kynaston, MODERNITY BRITAIN (Bloomsbury)
Louisa Lim, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF AMNESIA (Oxford University Press)
David Marquand, MAMMON’S KINGDOM: AN ESSAY ON BRITAIN, NOW (Penguin)
James Meek, PRIVATE ISLAND: WHY BRITAIN NOW BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE (Verso)
Lara Pawson, IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE: ANGOLA’S FORGOTTEN MASSACRE (I. B. Tauris)

Journalism Prize longlist:
Ian Birrell, Mail On Sunday, The Guardian
Rosie Blau, The Economist
Martin Chulov, The Guardian
David Gardner, The Financial Times
Anthony Loyd, The Times
James Meek, London Review of Books
Suzanne Moore, The Guardian
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi, OpenDemocracy.net, Lacuna, New Statesman
Melanie Phillips, The Times, The Spectator
David Pilling, Financial Times
Steve Richards, The Independent
Mary Riddell, The Daily Telegraph
Peter Ross, Scotland on Sunday
Clare Sambrook, OpenDemocracy.net
Kim Sengupta, The Independent

Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils longlist:
George Arbuthnott, Slaves in peril on the sea
Lucy Bannerman, FGM: Child abuse that’s gone mainstream
Michael Buchanan and Andy McNicoll, Mental health crisis
Aditya Chakrabortty and Guardian team, London’s housing crisis
Steve Connor, The lost girls
Edward Docx, Walking with Karl
Alison Holt, Care of the elderly and vulnerable
Nick Mathiason, A great British housing crisis
Lindsay Pantry, Loneliness: The hidden epidemic
Lindsay Poulton and Guardian team, The shirt on your backs
Randeep Ramesh, Casino-style gambling
Louise Tickle, Domestic abuse: How victims are failed by society and the state
Times team, Secrets of Britain’s teen terror trade uncovered
Mark Townsend, Serco: A hunt for the truth inside Yarl’s Wood

ENDS

Maigret: Night at the Crossroads

A Graph Review:     50 plus highpoints to 60

Night at The Crossroads

George Simenon                          

Penguin Classics    9780141393483

£6.99  paperback

A new translation, published in 2014.     One of ten titles in this new wave of Maigret publishing in this ‘Inspector Maigret‘ format.
This title is translated by LInda Coverdale, c. 2014.  The note in the last pages shows the intention of publishing all Inspector Maigret titles, ten listed as available in this copy.             The first French edition was published 1931.

The simplicity of Simenon’s style, is enduring because character, scenery and mood are all swiftly, concisely drawn.  Noticeably, as the plot moves forward and characters and situations line up, the images and people become real and reinforced by subtly added description.  This despite some of them being a little ‘eccentric’ in todays world.   Remember this was written some eighty-five years ago.  Balancing lines, rather, contrary lines, of brief images of bird song or snatches of trees and skyline add to the filmic style of writing.

If you read original Sherlock Holmes stories then the language, content and way of life may seem a little curious but the mists and now folk-memories of Victorian London at the turn of the Nineteenth century nurture the stories of Conan Doyle (or indeed his many imitators, as he himself invited).  A similar vein runs through Maigret, as indeed Marple or Poirot plus many others of your own choice and period right up to the current television-recruited from ‘Hinterland’ or ‘The Bridge’. Each detective has his time and if a character and a plot is well written, as is Maigret, it will surpass that time.  MInd you Sherlock or Maigret’s pipe-smoking as a regular habit may not recur too soon.  Yes, I have seen a female Sherlock pipe-smoking.  Maybe a modern detective could take snuff and use it regularly in making his escape or other distracting ways.

Meanwhile Maigret uses his observation and jig-saw solving methodology to understand and solve another case.  The story roles on, you see what Maigret sees and no more.  Three houses, one with a working garage on an otherwise deserted stretch of road just outside Paris.  A stolen car from one found in a neighbour’s garage, with a body in it.  An interrogation of a Danish man of some distinguished manner and looks.  From here you follow with Maigret’s sights, sounds and actions.  What you do not get is internal workings of his brain but sometimes glimpses of anger, frustration and even physical action! The story covers a few days, or rather nights as much happens at night in the darkness of a rural, 1930s night.  Few characters but a potentially confusing plot is sorted amid a last hectic night of gunfire and car chase.  Of course there is finally an explanation of how the connections were made from visible and verbal clues. But note the human element of humour and farce tucked in.  LIfe, just as we know it……even down to the last page.

I was always a fan of Simenon’s writing.  It is many a year since I read anything of his and it is pleasing to re-discover him.  His full novels are well worth reading, possibly more so as his understanding of psychology is immense and his style is both persuasively simple and complex. The translation merits applause ( I have to say this from a non-French speaking aspect!) as period feel is throughout.

This book is 151 pages in a standard Penguin Classic format.  Main text is 12.5 points, which means it is an easy and quick read at approximately 48,000 words. This fits into a novella length, at the shorter end of a lot of crime fiction these days but the quality of writing plus the ‘Golden Age’ feel make it good value for £6.99.

Another good buy from Heffers in Cambridge, I must be biased, or don’t get around much!    

Some others in series:                                         Pieter the Latvian;   A Man’s Head;   The Yellow Dog; A Crime in Holland

P.S.    Have just read a news item that says Rowan Atkinson is to do two television films of Jules Maigret, filming to start late 2015.  Hurrah!!