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Help us support the writers of the future this Free Wills Month

October is Free Wills Month, an initiative led by the National Free Wills Network – a national network of law firms that offers free Will writing services to charity supporters aged 55+.

The Royal Literary Fund is one of more than 250 charity members of the National Free Wills Network, which means anyone interested in accessing the free Will writing service can contact us at any time throughout the year. We will refer you to the National Free Wills Network team, who will send across a list of local participating solicitors and a form. Then you just need to contact your chosen solicitor and arrange an appointment, take along your completed form, and have your Will written for free.

AA Milne © Howard Coster, National Portrait Gallery

The National Free Wills Network can only be accessed via referral by a participating charity, but there is no obligation to leave a legacy to any organisation.

If you do choose to leave a gift to the RLF in your Will, however, you will be in good company. A number of writers and creatives have previously left bequests or portions of their estates to the RLF, including author and creator of the Winnie-the-Pooh series AA Milne; author and Literary Editor of The New Statesman Janet Adam Smith; journalist and writer of the Swallows and Amazons series Arthur Ransome; artists Sven Berlin and Prunella Clough; war poet Rupert Brookes; and novelists Mary Hocking, Ursula Holden, Colin MacInnes, W Somerset Maugham and Angus Wilson.

Any money received by the RLF – whether by donation, copyright bequest or a gift left in a Will – goes towards supporting the next generation of writers, primarily through the provision of our hardship grants.

Over the past 235 years we have supported many professional writers. From playwrights to poets to novelists to non-fiction writers, previous RLF grants beneficiaries have included Paul Bailey, Anna Burns, Margaret Busby, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Mustapha Matura, Edna O’Brien, Mervyn Peake, Bram Stoker, Dylan Thomas and Antonia White.

Monique Roffey

In recent years we have also supported Monique Roffey, the award-winning Trinidadian-born British writer and activist whose many popular books include Passiontide and the multi-award winning The Mermaid of Black Conch; Scottish author, playwright and one of the UK’s foremost contemporary writers Ali Smith; Adam Weymouth, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year whose most recent book, Lone Wolf, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction; poet Helen Farish, who won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and has twice been short-listed for the T. S. Eliot prize; and multi-award winning novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi CBE, whose recent memoir Shattered details the accident that left him paralysed and its aftermath, and for which he continues to receive round-the-clock care.

Over a 20 year career the RLF have bailed me out three times with grants, each time as I was going under, in serious debt, with rent arrears. I don’t think my literary career would have survived without this financial aid. Not only did the RLF help patch things up, but the grants also bought me time to write.

Monique Roffey

We are proud of the RLF’s ongoing legacy, and every donation and gift left in a Will helps us to offer assistance to new generations of writers working across all genres. So if you believe, as we do, that writers matter because writing matters, we would be very grateful for your support. Through the generosity of people like you, we hope to be able to continue providing our community of writers with access to resources that will help them survive, thrive – and keep writing.

If you would like to be a part of our legacy, you can indicate your interest when talking with your National Free Wills Network solicitor.

For more information on the National Free Wills Network, take a look here.

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