Rupert Cornwell Prize 2024: Samuel McIlhagga named as this year’s winner

The annual award is aimed at younger journalists at the start of their careers

(Samuel McIlhagga)

The fifth Rupert Cornwell Prize for Journalism has been won by Samuel McIlhagga, a freelance journalist based in London.

The annual award is aimed at younger journalists towards the start of their careers. Mr McIlhagga beat an impressive range of applicants with his proposal for reports on wildfires and their impact on the Mexican border.

The prize was established in memory of Rupert Cornwell, the distinguished foreign correspondent and writer who died seven years ago. The goal is to help fund a suitable journalistic project in any of the broad regions Cornwell spent much of his career covering – North America, Europe and the Soviet Union.

The £5,000 prize is supported by The Independent and is awarded by the Rupert Cornwell Trust.

“I’m very happy to have been awarded the Rupert Cornwell Prize. We need more quality reportage and writing in the journalism sector. Rupert’s long and storied career was exemplary in this sense. I’m honoured to win a prize named after him. I look forward to spending a significant amount of time reporting on Mexico,” Mr McIlhagga said.

On behalf of the judges and the trust, Cornwell’s widow Susan, a former US Congressional correspondent for Reuters, praised Mr McIlhagga’s “detailed and well-written” proposal about the political and migratory polycrisis that wildfire is causing in northern and southern Mexico.

“The judges felt that Samuel is a skilled writer who has demonstrated the ability to ferret out complex, untold stories. We were impressed with his earlier reporting about topics ranging from libertarian cowboys in California’s militia towns to regeneration in downtown Cairo. He is a very worthy winner with a bright future.”

Mr McIlhagga has contributed to Unherd, The Financial Times, The National, and Jacobin, among others.

In a competition which attracted a high calibre of candidates, the judges also commended Nimra Shahid for her strong proposal about activists opposing a hydrogen hub project planned for the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

Rupert Cornwell was one of the most elegant of writers in recent times, and embodied the pioneering spirit of The Independent when he joined as one of its first recruits in 1986. He remained one of its most eloquent voices, writing for the title until his death in 2017.

From his reports for the Financial Times in Rome to years at The Independent chronicling the decline of the USSR, and on to the Trump phenomenon in the United States, he was a source of inspiration for his colleagues and now for a new generation of writers.