Backstage at Cadogan Hall, we caught up with Sir Lenny Henry before he stepped on stage for Women’s Words: From Page to Stage, the finale of the first-ever Chelsea Arts Festival – an evening celebrating 30 years of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the power of women’s stories – in Partnership with The White Company.
Lenny was buzzing with energy. “I’m very excited,” he said, smiling. “I’m really looking forward to doing two readings.” It was a special moment: a festival finale uniting literature, performance, and advocacy, with Lenny joining an outstanding line-up of voices (from Kate Mosse to Sheila Hancock) each celebrating storytelling and equality through the Women’s Prize Trust.
Sir Lenny Henry On Why This Evening Mattered
Lenny spoke passionately about why live events like this one matter. “We’re in an age when very powerful people are burning books, banning them, denigrating gender and sexuality and race and ethnicity,” he said. “The only thing we have is our power to generate art and make it worthwhile.”
For him, books are more than words on a page, they’re acts of resistance, empathy, and imagination. “Books mean everything to me,” he reflected. He admits he can’t walk past Waterstones or Foyles without buying something. Discovering The Colour Purple opened his eyes to what stories could do, and learning that Tolkien’s Shire was inspired by Birmingham’s Licky Hills made him realise the magic in the everyday.
“There’s a quote I love: a book is like a dream in your pocket. You can go places with a book in your pocket.”
Sir Lenny Henry on Inspiring the Next Generation
As conversation turned to young readers, Lenny’s passion grew even stronger. With reading habits among children in decline, he believes creativity in all its forms must be celebrated — but books, he insists, remain irreplaceable.
He’s involved in 500 Words, a national storytelling initiative inspiring children to invent characters and stories. “I go all over the place talking about why books are important,” he said. “When my daughter was little, I read to her every other night – and now she reads to her daughter. You pass it on, you pay it forward.”
Reading, he says, expands empathy, vocabulary, and imagination: “Books are a physical artefact of magic and wonder – and we should celebrate that.”
Literary Heroes and the Power of Story
Asked which authors have shaped him, Lenny rattled off a wide selection: Alice Walker, JRR Tolkien, Joan Didion, Stephen King, Diane Evans, Alan Moore, and even Quentin Tarantino, whose screenwriting he finds just as inspiring as any novel.
And when asked which book he’d grab if his house were burning down? Without hesitation: The Big Payback, his new book co-written with Marcus Reilly, exploring reparations and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. “If you read it in a book, it gives you a way of framing a conversation,” he said.
Supporting the Women’s Prize Trust
As the night’s theme came full circle, Lenny reflected on why the Women’s Prize Trust — and events like Women’s Words: From Page to Stage – are vital. “We need to support marginalised people in our industries,” he said. “You can’t just keep having the same five blonde blokes from Oxbridge doing everything. It’s time to let other people at the table.”
For Lenny, literature and equality go hand in hand. “We have to all support each other,” he said. “The only thing we have is our power to generate art and to make it worthwhile.”
When the lights came up at Cadogan Hall that evening, he delivered just that: art that moved, challenged, and reminded everyone in the room why books – and the stories they carry – remain one of our most powerful tools for connection. Thank you, Sir Lenny Henry!
