“The Hubert Butler Essay Prize is a splendid thing, both a tribute to one of the very greatest exponents of the form, and a venture aimed at ensuring the continued health and vivacity of the form itself. Montaigne would approve, and so would Orwell. Write on!” John Banville, Honorary Patron

HUBERT BUTLER ESSAY PRIZE 2024

The title of this year’s essay is:

‘With narratives of conflict currently distorted by misinformation and the substitution of memory for history, what are the chances of reconciliation?’

HOW TO ENTER

The Hubert Butler Essay Prize is in its seventh year. Over a period ominously racked by global crisis and conflict, the Prize has focussed attention on themes and issues which are central both to Butler’s work, and the world today- such as frontiers, identity, the abuse of political power, coping with the pandemic, and the tension between individual and community values. Last year’s winner Shane Conneely, addressing the question ‘How far can we trust science?’, concluded that we can only trust it as far as we can trust each other; and trustworthiness was much in the judges’ minds when choosing a topic for 2024. We wanted to encourage examination of the uses and abuses of history, at a time when deep-rooted antagonisms all round us have taken a particularly toxic form, and also to consider the implications of the tendency to discount ‘history’ in favour of ‘memory’. Butler was mordantly conscious of the need to interrogate our history in order to avoid ‘bitterly recoiling into self-sufficiency, pedantry, mythology and linguistics’; the danger nowadays is by no means restricted to the small nations he was writing about. Equally relevant is the Butlerian commitment to skewering evasions and double-think in order to advance towards a form of reconciliation. Butler’s commitment to clarity of thought and his determination to face up to uncomfortable truths has never been more acutely needed, and the essay form - as he showed so consummately - remains uniquely suited for projecting this essential endeavour.

Prof. Roy Foster
Chair of the Hubert Butler Essay Prize 2024