Koram wins PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2023 worth £2k

Kojo Koram has been awarded the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray Press).

The prize of £2,000, endowed by former PEN member Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman’s bequest, celebrates the best non-fiction on any historical subject. The winner was announced in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford.

Uncommon Wealth (John Murray Press) is “the little known and shocking history of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire,” prize organisers said. 

This year’s judging panel was chaired by academic Dan Hicks. He is joined by environmental humanities scholar and art historian Sria Chatterjee, and artistic director of the Migration Museum, Aditi Anand.

Hicks said: “With its meticulous, urgent and highly original retelling of the imperial origins of contemporary British socio-economic realities, Kojo Koram follows the money to show how colonialism continues to shape our contemporary world. The result is that most unusual thing: a book about the past that will have resonance for years to come.” 

Chatterjee described the book as “a rare treasure”. She added: “It shows us, in lucid, engaging prose, how our current economic crises in Britain and inequalities across the globe are bound up in and impacted by the aftermath of empire.” 

Zoe Sadler, events and prizes manager, English PEN, said: “Uncommon Wealth is an essential history of the shocking inequality that Britain enabled in the aftermath of empire, beautifully written and radically informative of the present, as well as the past.” 

Koram is a lecturer at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London and has edited several books previously. Prior to academia, he worked in social welfare law, youth work and teaching. He has written for the Guardian, Washington Post, Nation, Dissent, New Statesman and Critical Legal Thinking.