FT Series

The Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize

Enter your essay for a chance to be published and win £1,500
Enter the 2019 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize

Calling all young writers — your chance to be published in the FT

The Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize: how to write a winning entry

Six tips that could lift your essay to the £1,500 prize

Simon Schama: why not be wordy?

Aspiring writers are often advised to be concise — yet there are other ways of making every word count

The 2018 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner

Memories of being laid low in a Manhattan hotel by a honeymoon virus prompt a journey into the more distant past

The fight for survival in China’s abandoned rural towns

As China’s young migrate to cities, nature is reclaiming villages inhabited only by the old and poor

The muralists keeping peace in Belfast’s no man’s land

Protestant Mark Ervine and his Catholic apprentice Paul Doran on a fragile peace ‘on the wall’

More from this Series

Simon Schama: Why I write

Dickens’ abundance and Orwell’s asperity are equally inspiring

2016 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner: Cash and curry

How demonetisation and a TV chef inspired an unlikely Indian pilgrimage

2015 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner: Dreams of the sea

Bolivia’s battle to reclaim its lost coastline

2014 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner: Eiderdown

Edward Posnett explores the links between Icelanders, ducks and capitalism

2013 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner: British Muslim Soldier

Adnan Sarwar endured racial abuse growing up. What led him to fight ‘for Queen and country’?

2012 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner: Getting past Coetzee

The South African academic Hedley Twidle won the first Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize with this essay

The Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize 2019 terms and conditions