(L-R) Kathy Willis, Celia Haddon, Harry Hodges, Ella Baron, Christopher Wilson, Jack Womack, Freddie Hayward, Peter Cardwell, Isaac Pockney, Paddy Coulter, Wes Williams and Michael Crick
The judging panel of Geddes Trust chairman Peter Cardwell, the Geddes Fellow Professor Wes Williams, trustee Harry Hodges, and Kate Devlin, chief political correspondent of the Times, were given the task this year of sorting through the many entries, interviewing the most promising candidates and finally settling on the winners of this year’s Geddes Prize, Clive Taylor Prize and Ronnie Payne Prize.
Freddie Hayward of St Peter’s College is the winner of the Philip Geddes Prize for the most promising journalist at the University of Oxford. The judges were impressed with his breadth of articles, experience and potential to be a first-class reporter in a short space of time, having already written for the New Statesman, Daily Telegraph, Reuters and others. Freddie will report from the controversial Beirut Pride march, starting what the judges believe will be a career focused on some excellent writing from the Middle East.
Jack Womack of Balliol College is the winner of the Ronnie Payne Prize for foreign reporting. Jack’s wit, panache and sometimes hilariously poisonous lines leap off the page, and Norman Mailer and Truman Capote both mentioned at various times by the judges in their r deliberations. Jack will use his prize funding to go to Louisiana to investigate the effects of an island disappearing due, apparently, to climate change.
And Isaac Pockney of Hertford College is the winner of the Clive Taylor Prize for sports journalism. Both Isaac’s lyrical writing and beautiful photographs mark him as a huge talent and, like Freddie and Jack, a worthy winner. Isaac will go to New York to document both in print and in photographs why the sport of hurling is so important not just to the Irish-American community, but beyond.
The trust were delighted to welcome all three to tea with St Edmund Hall’s principal, Kathy Willis, as well as Ronnie Payne’s widow, Celia Haddon and emeritus trustee Christopher Wilson ahead of the 2020 Geddes memorial lecture. This year it was given by the broadcaster and writer Michael Crick on “Impartiality: the devil’s right of reply”. It was a rip-roaring lecture in which Michael took no prisoners among his former colleagues at Channel 4 news and his use of visual aides was particularly poignant as he showed attendees a video of Philip Geddes during his student days flooring Richard Nixon, by then a former US president, during a speech at the Oxford Union. The trust are hugely grateful to Michael for the time and effort he put into his outstanding lecture and would urge anybody with an interest in the state of the modern media to watch the video here. A selection of images from the event are below.
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