Guardian’s Luke Harding wins prestigious James Cameron prize

Luke Harding. The prize's chair of judges says it recognises a journalist who writes in the Cameron spirit 'original, eloquent, iconoclasic rebellious.' Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

The Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding has won the prestigious James Cameron prize for 2014 for his work on Russia, Ukraine, Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks.

The honour is given in memory of the celebrated foreign correspondent and author James Cameron, who died in 1985.

George Brock, professor of journalism at City University, London, and chair of the judges, said the award recognised the work of a journalist who writes and thinks in the James Cameron spirit that is to say original, eloquent, iconoclastic, perhaps somewhat rebellious and wide-ranging.

He added: We looked for someone who brought a touch of incisive wisdom to bear on a variety of subjects. And we found one: this years winner has written at a variety of lengths up to and including books on subjects from WikiLeaks to the dismemberment of Ukraine and the surveillance revelations of Edward Snowden.

Harding was the Guardians Moscow bureau chief from 2007 until 2011, when the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, eastern Ukraine and other war zones.

He is the author of several non-fiction books including Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia; WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy; and The Snowden Files,an account of the Edward Snowden revelations published in February.

The award was announced in central London shortly before an annual memorial lecture, delivered this year by Christine Ockrent, one of Frances best-known journalists, on the professions new risks and new rewards.

Harding is the latest in a number of Guardian and Observer writers to be recognised by the Cameron Trust. These include Gary Younge, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, David Hirst, Martin Woollacott, Ed Vulliamy, Jonathan Steele, Maggie OKane, Suzanne Goldenberg, Neal Ascherson and Chris McGreal.

Other recipients have included Lyse Doucet, Michael Buerk, John Simpson, Robert Fisk, Charles Wheeler, Bridget Kendall, George Alagiah, Fergal Keane and Ann Leslie.

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Guardian’s Luke Harding wins prestigious James Cameron prize