I’m disappointed, I was told I’d meet some Kennedies!

You should know that among the British, being forced to watch a film in which people say how great you are is actually considered cruel and inhumane treatment. We are a people of the firm handshake. If we’re feeling particularly effusive we may say ‘Well done’, but that’s generally followed by something like ‘You bastard’. In case the recipient becomes inappropriately giddy.

And so I am feeling very shaken, honestly, and I’m going to try and express why I feel so emotional about this award. And I’m going to try and do that quite briefly because no one wants to hear from Nancy Pelosi more than I do.

So, briefly then, on the top floor of my house in Edinburgh is a framed poster from Robert Kennedy’s presidential run. And I bought it from a memorabilia store in DC during my first ever Harry Potter tour in the states. And I bought it of course because Robert Kennedy has been, since my teens, one of my greatest heroes. We overlapped on this earth for only three years. So I know him by his legacy, and by the many biographies I’ve read.

Robert Kennedy embodied everything I most admire in a human being. He was morally and physically courageous. And like Churchill, I believe that courage is the foremost of the virtues because it guarantees all the others. He looked beyond the invisible, that powerful boundaries that can insulate people of privilege from the rest of the world. And he looked into those dark corners where poverty and discrimination and injustice breed. He was a man of empathy and action. And he brought about real change, and he continues to inspire people beyond the boundaries of his own country. And I’m not sure we can ask much more of any politician or indeed any human being.

Having said all of that, I do understand the very human desire not to go poking into too many dark corners. As you’ve just seen on the film, I experienced that feeling myself when I saw a picture of a small child screaming through wire in a British news paper. And I went to turn the page. Now, I’m not usually very good with dates or counting, as anyone who would like to check the shifting numbers of house elves at Hogwarts can confirm, but I always know exactly how long ago it was that I saw that picture because I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, and she turns fifteen this January. I was very ashamed of my impulse, and so I turned back and I thought, ‘If it’s as bad as it looks, you have to do something about it’. And I read the accompanying article, which was by an undercover reporter, and it was bad. And so I knew I had to do something about it. And I began writing letters. And then I met many experts in the field. And that lead to the founding of my NGO Lumos, which aims to end child institutionalisation.

I think it isn’t widely enough understood, as Roger said on the film, that 80% of the children living in so called orphanages worldwide has at least one living parent. Research shows us that even well run institutions have catastrophic effects on child health and development. Statistics show us that one in five will have a criminal record, one in seven will enter the sex trade, and one in ten will kill themselves. We know that many institutions are hotbeds of abuse. And we understand that parents are pressured, and sometimes even tricked, into giving up their children on the promise of food, healthcare, and education that they know isn’t available anywhere else in their communities. Now I’ve often been asked why this issue, and my answer is there are few people on earth more vulnerable than a child who’s been taken from their family and hidden from mainstream society. I’ve now met children with attachment disorders so severe that they will crawl into the lap of any stranger who smiles at them. I’ve seen profoundly ill children lying three in a bed with minimal human contact, and no stimulation. And I’ve stood in roomfulls of babies who’ve learnt not to cry.

Now, there is good news, believe it or not. And the good news is that this is an entirely man made problem, and we can fix it. That is good news. We have to have hope here. And it is fixable, as long as we have the individual and the political will. Incredibly it is cheaper to support children in their own family than it is to warehouse them in this way. And most importantly of all. The outcomes for children are hugely improved if they’re brought up in loving family care. And that include foster care. And we can all make small changes to bring about that outcome by making sure we never donate to so called orphanages and we don’t volunteer in them. So I’m very, very proud and grateful to all of our incredible Lumos staff around the world. We’re now providing support on deinstitutionalisation to 50 countries globally. And we’ve so far helped just under 50,000 children directly. Either moving them from institutions into loving families, often their own, or preventing them entering the institution in the first place. And I cover all core costs of Lumos, so all donations go directly to programs that help children.

Can I just say, this speech is full of typos, so whoever got it on the silent auction, send it to me and I’ll copy edit it for you. It’s really annoying me as I read through. Anyway. I’m nearly there.

I didn’t know the sex of the baby I was carrying when I first read about that cage child, but I did know that if it was a boy, I would name him Robert, after Robert Kennedy. And in fact she became Mackenzie and I became Robert. When I was thinking up a pen name for the crime series that has been one of the great joys of my writing life I took the name Robert Galbraith in tribute to my political hero. So I’m currently just a few pages away from completing JK’s thirteenth and Robert’s fifth novel. And if I hadn’t come to New York to accept this award I would have finished it this week. And I should say that I enter a state that can best be described as feral when I’m in the final stages of a book, so one of the many extraordinary things about this evening is that I’m standing in front of you not looking like a cave dwelling hermit. And for this my husband thanks you. So I just want to say thank you. This truly is one of the most extraordinary honours I could have possibly been given, and I shouldn’t ask for anything else while I’m standing here, but I will. If you would like to know more about how to help some of the worlds most vulnerable children, please visit wearelumos.org.

Thank you.

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I’ve never been sorrier not to be able to Apparate, because I’d give so much to be with the Cursed Child cast and creative team tonight.

My collaboration with Jack, John, Sonia, Colin and an extraordinary cast has been one of the most joyful and satisfying creative experiences in my life.

I knew they were all stupendously talented, but I never dreamed we’d create something quite so special together. And the reaction from audiences has been beyond all our wildest imaginations. And we’re all people with wild imaginations.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to The Olivier Awards. It means everything to have the industry recognized the team behind the play.

And to every wonderful person who works on Cursed Child, ignore that old doom monger, Dumbledore. Tonight is a shining moment with no drop of poison in it.

Enjoy and have an extra drink from me.

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Hans Christian Andersen is a writer I revere, because his work was of that rare order that seems to transcend authorship. He created indestructible, eternal characters. The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, and The Naked Emperor have become so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that we are in danger of forgetting that we were not born knowing about them, that Andersen gave them to us. His stories have spoken to generations across many nations and have spawned a million interpretations, yet the originals retain the greatest fascination of all.

Andersen understood that writing for children does not mean pureeing what one would have written for adults. It ought not to be bland or soppy or devoid of challenging ingredients. Those who write for children, or at least those who write best for children, are not child-like or immature, but they do remember with sometimes painful intensity both what it was to be small and confused and how wonderful was that fierce joy in the moment that can become so elusive in later life. Any book that is written down to children or with one nervous sideways eye on the author’s fellow adults or in the belief that this is the kind of thing that ‘they like’ cannot work and will not last. Children are not “they”. They are us. And this is why writing that succeeds with children often succeeds just as well with adults — not because the latter are infantile or regressive, but because the true dilemmas of childhood are the dilemmas of the whole of life: those of belonging and betrayal, the power of the group and the courage it takes to be an individual, of love and loss, and learning what it is to be a human being, let alone a good, brave, or honest one.

Hans Christian Andersen’s work is an eloquent rebuttal to those people who would sanitize children’s literature. For all the warmth, humor, and beauty of his stories, he was not afraid to depict cruelty, injustice, or pain. His Little Match Girl dies quietly of poverty and his Mermaid shows that to risk everything and yet to lose has its own romantic splendor, its own grandeur. I do not presume to compare the Harry Potter books with stories that have lasted two hundred years, but I loved my own characters so much that leaving them all behind after seventeen years was a kind of bereavement. The fact that so many people enjoyed the world that I made stuns me every day, and yet miraculously, it still feels like my own private kingdom where I can’t help strolling occasionally just to see what my surviving characters are up to.

I love meeting young men and women who grew up reading the Harry Potter books. Sometimes they are apologetic. “You must hear this all the time.” But I’m never bored by meeting people who lived at Hogwarts with me. This is the miracle of literature to which no other medium can compare — that the writer and the reader’s imaginations must join together to make the story, so that there are as many different Harrys, Hagrids, and Forbidden Forests as there are co-creators, each one personal to the reader.

The books we read in childhood often have a particular power over us. Perhaps this is not only because we are impressionable and sensitive in youth, but because we are so exacting when we are young — happy to reject anything that does not hold our attention. Children don’t buy books because they think they ought to read them or because they want to display them on their coffee tables. Children keep reading purely because they want to know what happens next, and as such, they are the most demanding yet satisfying readership of all.

So, thank you to everyone, young and old who stuck loyally with Harry through seven volumes of adventures, to everybody at Harry’s many publishers who helped bring his story to new readers and with particular thanks to Gyldendal, my Danish publisher, to my family for putting up with me all these years that I kept disappearing on the Hogwarts Express, and of course, to the Hans Christian Andersen Prize committee and the city of Odense for presenting me with an award I shall treasure all my life.

Thank you very much.

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It was a great surprise, and an even greater honour, to be told that I had been given the Prince of Asturias award for Concord.

I certainly didn’t set out to teach, or to preach, to children. In fact, I believe that, with rare exceptions, works of juvenile fiction suffer if the author is more intent on instructing his or her readers than beguiling them with a story. Nevertheless I have always believed the Harry Potter books to be highly moral. I wanted to depict the ambiguities of a society where bigotry, cruelty, hypocrisy and corruption are rife, the better to show how truly heroic it is, whatever your age, to fight a battle that can never be won. And I also wanted to reflect the fact that life can be difficult and confusing between the ages of eleven and seventeen, even when armed with a wand.

I have been writing stories for thirty-two years and have never wanted to be anything other than an author. I lost myself in books as a child, they were central to my existence, and my appreciation of their importance has only increased over time. Children need stories because they need to test their imaginations, try on other people’s ideas, inhabit other lives, send their minds where their bodies are not yet mature enough to go. No film, no television programme, no computer or video game can ever duplicate the magic that occurs when the reader’s imagination meets the author’s to create a unique, private kingdom.

The Prince of Asturias award is very meaningful to me because it celebrates that aspect of the books’ success of which I am most proud: the fact that so many children, of such widely diverse backgrounds, have chosen to accompany Harry during his five years at Hogwarts. I will therefore be donating my prize money to the International Reading Association’s Developing Countries Fund, which promotes literacy worldwide.

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