About the prize

The Charles de Lisle Essay Prize, launched in 2024, is a new prize for A-level students doing History or Classics on the UNIQ course at Oxford University. It has been funded and inspired by Charles de Lisle, the political journalist (and Oxford history graduate) who died in 2014, from a sudden illness, at the age of 54. He left some money for a prize in his will, along with the wish that it should be used to encourage “excellence in writing” among A-level students at state schools.

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UNIQ is a short summer course, a taster of university life designed for students at UK state schools who are thinking of applying to Oxford. Priority is given to “students with good grades from backgrounds that are under-represented at Oxford and other universities”. Once accepted for UNIQ, the students stay in an Oxford college, go to lectures, write an essay and attend a tutorial. That essay will now be entered, with the student’s agreement, for the Charles de Lisle Prize.

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The essays will be marked by the postgraduates who lead the tutorials, and the two writers from each group with the highest marks will be among the winners of the prize. There are seven groups – four in History, three in Classics – so there will be 14 winners every year.

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They will each receive £100 and a handsome certificate designed by Christine Sullivan, the art director of this website. Their essays will be published here in due course – again, assuming they agree.

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For details of the UNIQ course, please go to