'Independent' writer wins Orwell award

The Independent columnist and reporter Johann Hari has won the Orwell Prize for political writing, the award's judges announced last night. The prize, inaugurated in 1993 and given annually to a journalist and to an author, aims to reward those who have come closest to achieving George Orwell's aim of making "political writing into an art". The judges called his work, "elegant and effective political analysis".

The book prize went to the Palestinian human rights activist Raja Shehadeh.