27 MAY 2025
ORWELL AND PROPAGANDA
“All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.” – George Orwell
From "fake news" and outright lies to algorithmic echo chambers and the return of great power politics, George Orwell’s warnings about language, truth, and control feel more urgent than ever. Are we living in a new age of propaganda? Does the truth stand a chance? Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss how propaganda is evolving—and how it’s shaping our political realities. Featuring Kim Darroch, former UK Ambassador to the United States, with further speakers to be announced.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Frontline Club
28 MAY 2025
ORWELL AND CHINA
“Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Nineteen Eighty-Four
The People’s Republic of China is a rare example of a “Big Brother” state where Orwell’s work is not only available, but widely read and discussed. At the same time, dystopian fiction—from Nineteen Eighty-Four to The Hunger Games—continues to inspire protest movements like the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong.
What does Orwell mean in a Chinese context today? How do writers, activists, and politicians interpret his legacy in an age of surveillance, censorship, and global influence?
Join us for a timely conversation with a distinguished panel Isabel Hilton (Founder, China Dialogue Trust) and Jeff Wasserstrom (Author, Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong and The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing), chaired by Cindy Yu (incoming contributing editor at The Times and The Sunday Times),
3 JUNE 2025
CAN WE ALL BELONG? THE PQ CONVERSATION
With immigration yet again a defining issue in British politics, is it still possible to tell a national story that speaks across political and ideological divides? In a UK that’s increasingly diverse, can we find common ground — or are we destined to fracture further? Tariq Modood, founding director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship and a leading thinker on multiculturalism, joins Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, and Nicola Kelly, journalist and author of Anywhere But Here: How Britain's Broken Asylum System Fails Us All, to explore the issues of national identity, immigration, and belonging in modern Britain in this year’s Political Quarterly Conversation.
4 JUNE 2025
TOWARD EUROPEAN UNITY? A CONTINENT AT A CROSSROADS
In his 1947 essay Toward European Unity, George Orwell proposed that a democratic socialist United States of Europe was the best hope for the continent if it was to resist the dominance of the world's nuclear powers: the USA to the West and the Soviet Union to the East. The events of the last few years have left Europeans asking themselves similar questions, although this time in the context of the rise of China, the shock of Putin's Russia aggression in Ukraine and creeping illiberalism and authoritarianism across the world and in the EU itself. Today, the question of where Europe has been, and where it's going, is more alive than ever.
Join our panel of experts as they discuss Europe at a crossroads, offering perspectives on the past and some ideas for what might come next. With Colin Crouch, Professor Emeritus at Warwick University and author of Rethinking Political Identity: Citizens and Parties in Europe, Katya Hoyer, historian and author of Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990, and further participants to be announced.
This event is organised in collaboration with Pushkin House
12 June 2025
THE POLITICS OF FOOTBALL
“Football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." Nineteen Eighty-Four
Given the cultural and social impact of the game, and its deep personal importance for so many fans, it is no surprise that football is inextricable from politics, both nationally and globally. On the eve of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, FIFA continues to receive allegations of corruption and ignoring human rights abuses. At home, clubs are more than ever the playthings of wealth and power, while betting companies flood the game with advertising.
How did we get here, and what might the future look like? Is the game, as they say, gone?
Join our panel of experts, including Philippe Auclair, writer, broadcaster and contributor to the Guardian Football Weekly podcast and David Conn, The Guardian’s investigations correspondent and author of The Fall of the House of Fifa, with further speakers to be announced.
17 June 2025
MASTERCLASS: TELLING OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES
In this Arvon Masterclass Peter Apps, author of the Orwell Prize-winning Show Me The Bodies, will discuss the techniques of approaching subjects for interview, getting the most out of the interview itself, and what comes next, and will cover the most pressing ethical questions that naturally arise. Whether you’re writing political polemic or a more intimate personal account, you will learn the tools to tell people’s stories in a truthful, emotive and engaging way.
The session is run in conjunction with The Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness. 20 free places are available to individuals who have submitted work for the prize this year.
23 June 2025
BENEFIT OF CLERGY
ART, MORALITY AND THE “GENIUS MYTH”
"The important thing is not to denounce him as a cad who ought to be horsewhipped, or to defend him as a genius who ought not to be questioned, but to find out why he exhibits that particular set of aberrations." – George Orwell
What do we do with great art made by deeply flawed—or even reprehensible—people? In his 1944 essay Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí, Orwell wrestled with two "fallacies": that no "morally degraded" person can produce good art, and that anyone who raises moral objections to good art has no "aesthetic sense". Eighty years on, the “middle ground” Orwell sought remains elusive—and Orwell himself is now part of the debate.
In this special Orwell Festival event, Helen Lewis, journalist and author of The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers, joins Nathan Waddell, author of A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell, to discuss what happens when morality, art, and "genius" collide.
25 June 2025
ORWELL PRIZE CEREMONY 2025
Following the announcement of the shortlists on 14 May, the winners of this year’s Orwell Prizes will be announced at the Prize Ceremony on Wednesday 25 June.