Andrew O'Hagan Runner-Up in The William Hazlitt Inaugural Essay Prize

Andrew O’Hagan, Creative Writing Fellow in the Department of English, has been awarded £1,000 as one of the five runners-up for The William Hazlitt Inaugural Essay Prize 2013. The prize is open to writers of any nationality, and is awarded to the best essay in the English language on any subject.

In his essay, Light Entertainment, O’Hagan investigates the specific cultural and social conditions that helped to facilitate and conceal the crimes that have since led to Operation Yewtree. He considers a number of factors - from the public’s deification of the biggest television personalities of the 1960s and 1970s, to the laissez-faire attitude of the BBC, in particular – to illustrate how it has been possible for culprits to escape punishment for so long.

Andrew O’Hagan is an accomplished novelist and non-fiction writer, and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Times.