Sabrina Miller

“The wig is knotted and ill-fitting. The calf-length black skirt is rather frumpy – and the less said about what’s been stuffed down the front of the green polo shirt, the better.” The levity of the opening paragraph belies the poignancy of Sabrina Miller’s interviews with Ukrainian men desperately trying to dodge the draft in a country where the hungry maw of war may soon consume female conscripts too.

An exclusive interview with former Israeli hostage Hagar Brodutch, who was kidnapped from her kibbutz home during the 7 October attacks and held in Gaza with four young children for 51 days, is heartbreaking. The ordeal left them traumatised – not just by the captivity but also by Israel’s delay in rescuing the hostages. “I never thought they would bomb Gaza with the hostages still inside,” reflects Hagar.

A piece on the fringe ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Neturei Karta is both fascinating and chilling: they believe, among other things, that the Holocaust was punishment from God inflicted on Jews because of their bad behaviour.

Judges praised Miller’s “superb reporting in incredibly challenging circumstances,” and her courage in getting the stories in the first place. “A great storyteller… her writing shows sophistication and humanity.”