Rooney unable to collect award over Palestine Action arrest risk

The Irish author Sally Rooney could not travel to collect a literary prize this week because of concerns that she may be arrested if she enters the UK, given her support of the banned group Palestine Action.

- Ella Creamer

Rooney won the Sky Arts award for literature for her fourth novel, Intermezzo. At a ceremony on Tuesday, audiences were told that Rooney “couldn’t be here”, before her editor, the Faber publisher Alex Bowler, collected the award on her behalf.

Bowler read a statement from Rooney, in which she explained that because of her support for “nonviolent antiwar protest” she had been advised that she could “no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest”.