The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism 2024: Results
Announcing the winners of the 2024 prizes.
Journalism was always at the heart of Anthony Burgess’s life as a writer, even before he had published his first book. When he was a student at Manchester University, one of the articles he contributed to the university magazine was a review of The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot. He didn’t think much of it and was not afraid to say so, dismissing the play as a dull drawing-room comedy, full of stereotypes and ‘superficial profundities.’
Later on, when Burgess was a soldier in Gibraltar, he reviewed films and poetry for newspapers and army magazines. After the war, as a teacher in the 1950s, he edited a school magazine, The Banburian, and encouraged his students to write for it.
His most prolific period as a journalist was in the 1960s and 1970s, when he wrote for most of the journals published in London, New York and elsewhere. At one point he was the television critic of the Listener, the opera critic of Queen magazine, the theatre critic of the Spectator and the food critic of another publication. At the same time he was writing at least one novel every year, and making regular appearances on television and radio.
As a journalist and cultural commentator, Burgess wrote about almost everything, including music, architecture, history, fashion, dictionaries and encyclopaedias. In a single year, he published articles about Wagner’s operas, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the letters of Vladimir Nabokov, the adventures of Tintin, the life and death of Mozart, and the boxer Muhammad Ali.
Burgess wrote more for the Observer than for any other publication, and his association with the paper lasted more than 30 years. He reviewed first novels by Joseph Heller, Sylvia Plath and Umberto Eco, enjoying the role of talent scout, whose job was to welcome and encourage new voices.
The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism celebrates Burgess’s connection with the Observer, but the emphasis of the competition is forward-looking rather than commemorative.
Since 2012, the prize has been looking for new voices in arts journalism: not necessarily young voices, but writers who are not yet established, and whose work deserves to be more widely known.
Previous winners of the prize include the writer and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, and Leah Broad, a musicologist and biographer whose first book, Quartet, has recently been published in paperback by Faber. Last year’s winner, En Liang Khong, is now the deputy arts editor of a national newspaper.
This year’s runners-up, winning £500 each, are Anna McGee, who wrote about ‘Il Deposito Visitabile’, an exhibition drawn from the storerooms of Florence’s museums; and Alice Hughes, who wrote an incisive review of the film Anatomy of a Fall.
The winner of the £3000 prize is Oscar Jelley, for his review of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, a novel by Isabel Waidner.
The prize trophies are based on the plaque awarded to Burgess in February 1980, when he won the Critic of the Year prize for 1979 at the British Press Awards. The original trophy, rather yellowed by cigar smoke, is part of the Burgess Foundation’s archive collection.
This year’s guest judge was Laura Cumming, the art critic of the Observer, who has herself been named as Critic of the Year in 2024.
The prizes were presented at a ceremony at the Art Workers’ Guild on Queen Square in London on 22 May.
The next Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize will be open for entries in June, with a closing date of 28 February 2025.
Find out more
An archive of essays by winners and runners-up of the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize, published in the Observer.
Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World by Leah Broad, winner of the 2016 Prize (affiliate link).
Dressed: The Philosophy of Clothes by Shahidha K. Bari, 2015 winner (affiliate link).
The Ink Trade by Anthony Burgess: a collection of his literary journalism.
The Devil Prefers Mozart by Anthony Burgess: a collection of his essays on music.