CAMRI | The Orwell Lecture 2016 ‘The Right to Dissent (and the Left too)’

The Orwell Lecture 2016 ‘The Right to Dissent (and the Left too)’

A Discussion Chaired by Jean Seaton, published by The Orwell Prize

Lecture begins at 2:52

As part of her role at the Orwell Prize, CAMRI Professor, Jean Seaton helped to bring writer, editor and broadcaster Ian Hislop to present this year’s Orwell lecture at UCL.

Ian Hislop was educated at Ardingly College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has been editor of Private Eye since 1986. He is probably best known for his role as a regular team captain on the BBC show Have I Got News for You.

He joined Private Eye in 1981, and became editor in 1986. He has appeared on BBC Question Time, written and presented documentaries for television and radio about various subjects including the History of Tax, female hymn writers, Dr Beeching, Victorian Philanthropists, the First World War, and The Stiff Upper Lip. In 2016 he presented a documentary on Victorian Benefits: Workers or Shirkers. He co-wrote a dramatisation of The Wipers Times with Nick Newman, which was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Single Drama of 2014, and won the Best Single Drama Award in Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, 2014. In 2016, he and Nick Newman wrote the critically acclaimed 2016 Radio 4 comedy drama Trial By Laughter.

Ian has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award in 1991 and a British Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Comedy Awards 2011 for Have I Got News for You, Editors’ Editor, British Society of Magazine Editors in 1991; Magazine of the Year, What the Papers Say in 1991; Editor of the Year, British Society of Magazine Editors, in 1998; Channel 4 Political Awards, for Political Satire in 2004; and a Channel 4 Political Award, for Political Comedy in 2006, A Voice of the Listener and Viewer Award for Excellence in Broadcasting 2009, Political Studies Association. Diamond Jubilee Award. Best Political Satire, 2010, a Liberty Human Rights Award for Private Eye in 2011 and Trip Advisors Travellers’ Choice in 2012. Have I Got News For You won a BAFTA in 2016 for Best Comedy Programme.

Ian Hislop gave the Orwell Lecture on Tuesday 15th November at University College London

About Jean Seaton

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History and the Official Historian of the BBC. She will publish in the Autumn of 2024 the next volume of the Corporations story, Holding the Line: the BBC and the Nation, taking Lord Asa Briggs work forward for Profile Books. This involves everything the BBC did in a tumultuous decade from the conflict in Northern Ireland, to the invasion of the Falklands, to Not the Nine O'Clock News, the Proms, the early music revolution, devolution, Dennis Potter's greatest plays, Attenborough's revolutionary series Life on Earth, and Radio 1s most influential moment, as well as the role of women in the Corporation, programmes for children and a tense and complicated relationship with the government. The historian was given privileged access to BBC archives, but also gained privileged access to state papers. For the first time the Corporation's history is seen in the round. It has depended on several hundred interviews, and explores both the programme making decision that go into the making of an iconic Television series like John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but also the high politics around the imposition of the broadcasting ban.