Duncan McLaren, who recently joined Blake Friedmann as a client of Isobel Dixon's, has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Blogs 2011 for his moving diaries about visiting his mother, Mabel, in her care home. He is writing a memoir about his parents, ZIMMERSONG: A Lifelong Love Story, based on this blog.

Duncan's blog 'Visiting Mabel' on the Saga site is one of seven on the Orwell Blog Prize shortlist, with the final awards ceremony to be held in Westminster on May 17. Each winner of Britain's most prestigious prize for political writing will receive £3000.

Duncan's 'inquisitive, inventive' portrait of Evelyn Waugh, EVELYN! RHAPSODY FOR AN OBSESSIVE LOVE will be published by Beautiful Books in September 2011. Here Duncan, who wrote LOOKING FOR ENID, an acclaimed biography of Enid Blyton, turns his attention to Evelyn Waugh, charting a very personal course through Waugh's life, up until the writing and publication of his final novel, Unconditional Surrender.