LONDON — Veteran British novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer William Boyd has been named the recipient of the 2026 Pleasure of Reading Prize.
The annual £10,000 literary award, sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing and supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, is administered by the literacy charity Give a Book. It explicitly honors an author writing in English whose body of work brings profound reading pleasure to others. Under the unique mechanics of the prize, the £10,000 purse is split equally between the winning author and a specific Give a Book charitable initiative of their choice—such as a school, prison, or community outreach project where reading is used to inspire and change lives.
Reacting to the announcement, the 74-year-old author of Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa expressed immense pride in the recognition.
“I’m both delighted and honoured to have won the Pleasure for Reading Prize in 2026. It is wonderful to be in the company of such distinguished previous winners. Probably the best prize any serious author can win!”
— William Boyd
Celebrating “Whole-Life” Storytelling
Boyd was selected by a distinguished judging panel chaired by writer and biographer Lady Antonia Fraser, alongside philanthropist Sigrid Rausing, special correspondent James Naughtie, guest judge Esther Freud, and the 2025 prize winner, novelist Robert Harris.
Over a career spanning more than four decades, Boyd has published 19 novels, alongside numerous screenplays and short story collections. The judges highly commended his distinct mastery of the “whole-life novel”—a narrative form that meticulously follows a single character across multiple decades, charting their private triumphs, failures, and reinventions against a backdrop of sweeping historical change.
In a joint statement, the judging panel praised Boyd’s rare ability to blend literary depth with accessible, high-energy storytelling.
“Boyd’s style is vivid and strongly plotted, and beneath the readability of his novels lie serious themes of memory, self-invention and the fragile border between truth and fiction. Reading William Boyd is always a pleasure.”
— The 2026 Judging Panel
A History of Literary Excellence
The Pleasure of Reading Prize was initially devised by Give a Book during the COVID-19 lockdowns, a period that saw a massive global resurgence in reading for comfort and escapism. The award was directly inspired by The Pleasure of Reading anthology, which was edited by Lady Antonia Fraser and published by Bloomsbury. Boyd joins an elite roster of past winners that includes Ali Smith (2021), Edna O’Brien (2022), Sebastian Barry (2023), Adam Nicolson (2024), and Robert Harris (2025).
Born in Accra, Ghana, Boyd’s early life in West Africa heavily influenced the comic and political landscapes of his early celebrated works, including An Ice-Cream War, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has previously won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Costa Book Award, and he was appointed a CBE for services to literature in 2005.
The announcement of which specific literacy project will receive Boyd’s matched £5,000 charitable funding is expected to be released by Give a Book later this month.
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