Isabel Allende and Sir Don McCullin CBE to be awarded the prestigious Bodley Medal

Chilean-American author Isabel Allende and British photojournalist Sir Don McCullin CBE are to be awarded the Bodleian Libraries’ highest accolade, the Bodley Medal, for their outstanding contribution to the fields of literature and photography respectively.

Isabel Allende will be awarded her medal on Wednesday 12 February 2025 at the Morgan Library in New York, which is currently presenting the exhibition Franz Kafka in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries. Sir Don McCullin CBE will receive his medal at a public event in the Sheldonian Theatre as part of the Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April 2025.

The Bodley Medal is the Bodleian Libraries’ highest honour, awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of books and literature, libraries, media and communications, science, and philanthropy. First presented in 2002, previous recipients have included PD James and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (2002), Dame Hilary Mantel (2013), Professor Mary Beard (2016), Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (2019), Zadie Smith (2022), Colm Tóibín (2023), and most recently Philip Pullman (2024).

Isabel Allende, born in Peru and raised in Chile, is a novelist, feminist, and philanthropist. She is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than eighty million copies of her books across forty-two languages. She is the author of several bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The Wind Knows My Name, Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. Her forthcoming new novel My Name is Emilia del Valle will be published in May 2025. In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor; and in 2018, she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. She lives in California with her husband and dogs.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian and the Helen Hamlyn Director of the University Libraries, said:

The Bodleian is delighted to honour Isabel Allende with the Bodley Medal. As one of the world’s greatest writers, and as such a powerful advocate for the rights of women, her contribution to the world of letters and to society as a whole has been truly outstanding.

Sir Don McCullin CBE is a celebrated British photojournalist whose photographs of war, conflict and poverty have been celebrated for their unflinching portrayal of the underside of society. McCullin was born in 1935 and, when called up for his national service in 1953, he applied to the RAF as a photographer and was given training to his photographic technique as a photographer’s assistant. Following this service, McCullin began submitting photographs to newspapers and began a career as a professional photographer. Between 1966 and 1984, McCullin worked as an overseas correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine. In his time at the magazine, McCullin covered conflicts in Biafra, Northern Ireland, Vietnam and Lebanon, as well as victims of poverty, famine and disease including the AIDS epidemic. More recently, McCullin has also been recognised as an accomplished landscape photographer, creating meditative and atmospheric images of his home county of Somerset. McCullin’s work has been displayed in exhibition retrospectives at Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, the Imperial War Museum and the National Museum of Canada and he has been called “Britain’s greatest living photographer”.

Richard Ovenden continues:

Sir Don McCullin is one of the greatest photographers ever to have pressed the shutter on a camera. He is a worthy recipient of the Bodley Medal, our highest honour, whose photojournalism, and images of landscapes and ancient buildings have changed the way we view the world. The Bodleian has been engaged with photography since its origins in the early 19th century, and continues to place great emphasis on the medium, and is proud to present the medal to such a powerful photographer.

For further information, please contact bodleian.libraries@flint-culture.com