Nick Clooney presents Dayton International Literary Peace Prize to Prof NIgel Young

From Craven Herald UK

Professor Nigel Young awarded Dayton International Literary Peace Prize

11:50am Sunday 1st January 2012 in News

An encyclopedia compiled and edited by a Hetton man has been awarded the prestigious Dayton International Literary Peace Prize.

Professor Nigel Young spent seven years putting together the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, which is split into four volumes, with 450 contributors and 850 entries.

Professor Young travelled to Dayton, Ohio, to receive the award from Nick Clooney, father of Hollywood actor George Clooney, at a ceremony attended by more than 500 people.

Professor Robert Fogerty, a member of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize committee, said: “As private citizens working for peace, we are honoured to bestow this special award on a historic collaborative work of writing, editing and publishing.” He also emphasised that the award-winning encyclopedia was “a heroic and brilliant piece of collective scholarship”.

The prize was founded in 1996 to celebrate the Dayton Accords which ended the Yugoslav Bosnian War. Kati Marton, the widow of US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke who signed that Treaty, spoke at the ceremony and said the encyclopedia should be in all schools and churches worldwide.

A donated copy is already in Skipton Library and there are also copies at the University of Bradford Library.

Professor Young said: “The award reminds us that the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace have much in common.

“They are both part of the long, often painstakingly slow process of global institution building for peace, ingredients in moving towards a worldwide culture of peace.

“Just like democracy, and human rights, peace has to be constructed, not only in minds and hearts but institutionally. Reliable works of reference are therefore as essential in the digital age as in the age of Johnson or Diderot.”

Dr Young and his family first came to the Dales in 1973, when he helped set up the University of Bradford’s Department of Peace Studies and for many years he directed a peace studies programme in New York