Publishing Company Blog | Orwell Prize longlist includes Jimmy Savile biography

Orwell Prize longlist includes Jimmy Savile biography

Written By Unknown on Saturday, March 28, 2015 | 3:43 AM

Search for ‘the real Savile’ lines up alongside life of Roy Jenkins and Nick Davies’ account of the phone hacking scandal

Dan Davies’ biography of Jimmy Savile, which opens with a chilling account of the removal of the headstone inscribed “it was good while it lasted” following revelations of the TV personality’s multiple sex crimes, has been longlisted for the Orwell prize for political writing.

The product of the author’s quest to “find the real” Savile, which includes extensive interviews with the man himself over the seven years before his death and lays out in harrowing detail the reality of his hundreds of criminal offences, has made a longlist of 12 for the prestigious £3,000 award. It sits alongside the Guardian’s Nick Davies’ expose of the phone hacking scandal, Hack Attack, and John Campbell’s biography of Roy Jenkins, the former home secretary and author whose career spanned 50 years. Reviewing Campbell’s work in the Guardian, MP Alan Johnson wrote: “The highest praise I can give to John Campbell’s biography is that Roy Jenkins would have been proud to have been its author.”