The Hubert Butler Essay Prize 2018 award ceremony took place on 24 October 2018 at the Irish Embassy in London. The Irish Ambassador H.E. Mr Adrian O'Neill welcomed guests and was followed by Prof R. F. Foster who talked about Butler, the prize and the three winners. Cordelia Gelly, Butler's grand-daughter, awarded Nigel Lewis the first prize and a runners-up prize to Victoria Mason. The second runner-up Rachel Andrews was unable to join but she sent a message which Cordelia read out.
Nigel Lewis receives £1000 for his prize-winning essay
and the two runners-up, Rachel Andrews and Victoria Mason, receive £500 each.
WINNER
NIGEL LEWIS
Nigel Lewis was born in Central America in 1948 and educated at Midhurst Grammar School in Sussex and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a journalist for the BBC World Service, Radio 3, and the CBC, and has occasionally contributed to The Sunday Times, New Statesman, Spectator, and Radio 4. His recent work includes The First Commandment, the English libretto for an early Mozart work (for the Classical Opera Company) and The Cover Plan Conspiracy: the British and Exercise Tiger (published last year as an e-book). He divides his time between North London and a small house in Italy, and is working on a novel.
RUNNER-UP
RACHEL ANDREWS
Rachel Andrews is a writer and journalist based in Cork, Ireland. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Longreads, the London Review of Books, Brick literary journal, the Dublin Review and the Stinging Fly. She has been shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize (2018), and for the Notting Hill Essay Prize (2017). In 2013 she was awarded the Documentary Essay Prize at the Centre for Documentary Studies, Duke University. She teaches journalism at Griffith College Cork.
RUNNER-UP
VICTORIA MASON
Victoria Mason grew up in Northern Ireland and lives in Coventry. Having studied history at Cambridge University, she spent a year living and working in Madrid, before returning to the UK. She now works for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Reconciliation team. She is married to Bernardo, a Spaniard whom she met in Bordeaux.
