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We are delighted to announce Michael Collins worthy winner of the annual Bernard Crick Prize for Best Article 2022 for ‘Cricket, Englishness and Racial Thinking' (93 1).
Accepting the award, Michael Collins said: “I just want to say thank you to PQ. It's a brilliant journal, very accessible and tackles a lot of urgent problems from an accessible, academic perspective... Today is Windrush day and the work and research I've been doing, and the article that I've published in The Political Quarterly is actually about the history of black cricket in England. It's sadly, and expectedly, a story of institutional racism. But it's also a story about the incredible contributions that black Caribbean settlers have made, and the ways in which they built things for themselves in the face of discrimination."
The criteria from judge Professor Andrew Gamble were as follows:
- The Orwell test: Was the article written in good, clear English?
- The scholarship test: Was its knowledge base sound and well grounded?
- The Alzheimer test: Could I remember its contents clearly several days after reading it?
- The durability test: Is it likely to be read some years later, or was it just good current comment?
- The originality test: Did it have something distinctly new to say?
- The Crick test: Would Bernard have appreciated it? (that doesn’t mean he would necessarily have agreed with it).
The prize was given at the Orwell Awards on 22 June 2023 at Conway Hall, London. Read the full article here.
