The Independent’s Samuel Lovett nominated for Orwell Prize

Samuel Lovett shortlisted for reporting on the lives of families who lost loved ones in the pandemic

Lovett is nominated for the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils (The Independent)

The Independent’s senior reporter Samuel Lovett has been shortlisted for an Orwell Prize.

Mr Lovett is a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils due to his reporting on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on ordinary people in the UK.

A winner will be chosen and announced at a ceremony on Thursday 14 July.

Mr Lovett was shortlisted for a special report detailing the lives of five different families in Leicester who lost loved ones in the pandemic.

He spent two weeks last summer with the different families, hearing about their experiences of Covid and building up a picture of how their lives had changed.

The Orwell Foundation awards prizes each year to the writing and reporting which best meets the spirit of George Orwell’s own ambition “to make political writing into an art”.

There are currently four Orwell Prizes; political writing, political fiction, journalism and exposing Britain’s social evils.

The winner of the social evils prize will be decided by five judges: Sophia Parker, Annadel Deas, Jo Swinson, Kirsty McNeill and Sophia Moreau.

The prize is supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and is named for the task Rowntree gave his organisation of searching out “the underlying causes of weakness or evil” that were behind Britain’s social problems.

In previous years it has been awarded to stories about abuse of hospital patients, county lines drug gangs and dementia care.

A festival of political writing is being planned this year from 12-14 July, with a series of events to take place around the shortlists for the different Orwell prizes.