The Bodley Head/ FT competition to find talented young voices in global non-fiction writing was launched in September 2012 with an essay by Simon Schama on ‘Why I write’ in the FT’s Life & Arts section.  Entrants aged 35 or under were asked to write up to 3,500 words on any subject that interested them, and there were submissions on topics as diverse as scarecrows, NGOs and American imperialism. These were whittled down to a shortlist of eight.

Hedley Twidle’s essay, Getting past Coetzee, went on to win the inaugural prize.