Robert Silver Essay Prize
£1,250 prize for essay on impact of British Jewry on 20th century Britain.
The friends of the late Robert Silver, barrister, journalist and historian, are pleased to announce the 2025 Robert Silver Essay Prize for an essay on a subject related to the impact of British Jewry on 20th century Britain.
The aim of the prize is to attract submissions from undergraduate and postgraduate students, young academics, journalists, and writers. Applicants should be a UK citizen or registered for an undergraduate/postgraduate programme within a UK university.
Essays should be no more than 8,000 words. In addition, submissions should include a summary version of 500 words. The winner will receive a £1,000 prize funded by Robert’s friends and family. A further £250 will be paid on publication of the summary version of the essay by the Jewish Chronicle.
2025 will be the fifth year of the Robert Silver Essay Prize.
The inaugural prize was awarded to Fearghal Grace, PhD candidate at Cambridge University, for his essay “Jewish Ex-Servicemen and the 1935 Visit of the British Legion to Nazi Germany”
The 2022 prize was awarded to Hollie Eaton, a DPhil candidate at Oxford University for her essay “Blackguards in Bonnets”. An edited version of Hollie’s essay appeared in the Jewish Chronicle on 26th August 2022.
The 2023 prize was awarded to Verity Laycock, a PhD candidate at Durham University for her essay “The Contribution of Jewish Female Émigré Designers to British Mid-20th Century Visual Culture and Identity”. An edited version of Verity’s essay was published in the Jewish Chronicle in October 2023.
The 2024 prize was awarded to Jacob Hougie, a third-year undergraduate in Human, Social and Political Sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for his essay ‘Jonathan Sacks’ Political Thought and its relation to Communitarianism’. The edited version of the essay will be published in the Jewish Chronicle later in the year.
We have been excited by the range of essays submitted for the prize in its first four years, reflecting the breadth and richness of the contribution of the Jewish community to British society and politics. After the richness of the contributions in the first three years which all addressed topics from the earlier part of the period, we were pleased to award the 2024 prize for a more recent subject. We are keen to receive entries addressing despite the impact of the Jewish community in every aspect of British life, from politics to academe, from captains of industry to icons of popular culture, at any point during the 20th century.
We intend to publish a collection of the winning essays in 2026 in Robert’s memory.
The sponsors of the Robert Silver Essay Prize are grateful to the Cambridge University Faculty of History for administrative support. Entries and enquiries should be sent by email to silverprize@hist.cam.ac.uk no later than 23 April 2025.
The winner will be announced before the end of the academic year.