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If you love reading, we are your Society - uniquely devoted to promoting and extending the knowledge and love of English literature, its rich past and its vibrant present.”
Colin Thubron, President
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Britain’s literature, both past and present, is unrivalled, and the Royal Society of Literature is the only organisation devoted to ensuring that it remains so. At a moment when the future of the book is imperilled, the Society’s work has never been more important.”
Michael Holroyd
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In recent years the RSL has revitalised itself and placed itself at the centre of debate on culture and education. Its increasingly popular events have become noted for bringing readers and writers together in lively engagement.”
Hilary Mantel
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The best, and best value programme of literary talks and discussions in London – a unique blend of literary seriousness and lively comment.”
Maggie Gee
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Becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature is an honour like no other. We are are elected not by some faceless bureaucratic committee but by our fellow writers and professional peers. It’s a true fellowship, at the heart of the RSL, and means everything to me, as I know it does to us all.”
Victoria Glendinning
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The more I worked with schoolchildren, through the RSL, the more I realised what a wonderful teaching and inspiration resource it is for the RSL to be right by the Thames, the bridges, a world class gallery and a historical London palace, full of ghosts and memories of ships. As well, of course, as a skating rink.”
Ruth Padel, former Writer in Residence at Somerset House, on taking RSL workshops with local children
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The RSL seizes every opportunity open to it to present the case for literature and those who create it by supporting the work of other writers’ organisations, and, in particular, the absolute necessity for a well-funded, comprehensive Public Lending Right, and the collective management of those secondary rights which writers cannot exercise by themselves.”
Maureen Duffy
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The RSL Review is packed with interviews, essays and photographs that you don’t find anywhere else in the press – an original, serious, and entertainingly offbeat record of our finest writers and writing.”
Margaret Drabble
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People need to feel in their very bones that the whole of English literature from Beowulf to Byron to Benjamin Zephaniah is theirs by right of inheritance. The Royal Society exists to show people what belongs to them and to welcome them into it.”
Philip Pullman
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A nation that does not celebrate its truest, bravest, toughest, most creative, most enduring writers, is a nation that has fallen out of love with itself.”
Ben Okri
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Piers Plowright’s recent master class on radio was hugely exciting, stimulating and thought-provoking. I came away feeling both energized and encouraged by Piers’s constructive comments, and convinced that radio is the writing medium for me.”
Julius Smit, RSL/Arvon master class participant
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Over the past year I've had the pleasure of reading work by students from several London schools who won commendation in the LSE schools creative writing competition. ...An email from any of the students showing up in my inbox reminds me that email is only a chore when the stuff that comes in on it is uninspiring and administrative. We should all be emailed by such creative sources.”
Ali Smith on judging the RSL/LSE schools creative writing competition
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Thanks so much for allowing four of us from South Hampstead High to come to the John Clare evening recently. It was really fascinating to hear about Clare's life in connection with his works from people who know so much about him, and it helped me to see him and his work in a new light. I really hope it might be possible to come to more meetings at the RSL.”
Rebecca Jacobs, pupil from South Hampstead High
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The recent John Clare evening at the Royal Society of Literature was so wonderful that I skipped home from the tube after it. Tom Durham’s reading of the poems was fantastic, and when he recited “I am” it nearly made me cry. Thanks lots and lots.”
Yasmin, sixth former from Streatham High School
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I could not have been happier seeing our kids reading next to Philip Pullman...I really cannot tell you how thrilled everyone was. One teacher the next morning said 'I could just feel their horizons expanding as they sat there.'”
Katie Waldegrave, First Story
*Fellows and Members can now book events online.*
The aim of the Royal Society of Literature is to nurture, celebrate and defend Britain's outstanding tradition of writing. To this end it organises public lectures and debates, makes awards to new and established writers, and campaigns for the encouragement and appreciation of authors.
The Society's greatest resource is its wide array of Fellows, encompassing many of the most distinguished writers of today. Among them are Chinua Achebe, Anita Desai, Seamus Heaney, Michael Holroyd, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul, Tom Stoppard and William Trevor. Past Fellows include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.B.Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy.
Although Fellowship of the RSL is by election, anyone can become a Member. Our events are open to all, and recordings of them are available as audio files on this website.