The news brand’s journalists John Harris and John Domokos have been awarded the prize for their decade-long look at life beyond SW1.
After receiving a nomination in 2020, The Guardian video series ‘Anywhere but Westminster’ has been awarded this year’s prestigious Orwell Prize for Journalism by top industry figures. The Orwell Foundation celebrates the best politically motivated writing, striving in the words of George Orwell to “make political writing into an art”.
Over the last decade, journalists Harris and Domokos have chronicled the experiences of people and places too often ignored, as tumultuous events such as Brexit and Covid have left lasting effects on everyday people’s lives. The journalists recently released a look back at the last ten years in British life from their interviewees’ perspectives.
Carrie Gracie, Orwell Prize panel chair and former China editor for the BBC, remarked that ‘Anywhere but Westminster’ “rose to the Orwell challenge…getting up and down the country, talking to ordinary people, listening so hard to their stories and putting those stories at the heart of our understanding of contemporary Britain”.
Clive Myrie, BBC newsreader and fellow judging panellist, added that by “giving voice to their subjects in their own words, the two Johns revealed deeper truths about the inequalities of society, so graphically exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. This was a fascinating, curated journey along roads journalists don’t travel as often as perhaps they should around Britain”.
