IN DEPTH


Author Interview Sir Lenny Henry


Lenny Henry on his return to writing for children, his literary influences and love of comic strips


The author, actor and comedian, whose middle- grade novel The Boy with Wings was published last year, shares his literary influences and aspirations


Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan


TT Why have you re-started your children’s writing career now?


LH I wrote a couple of children’s books for my daughter when she was litle, but


they were based on a kid called Charlie who had an extraordinary imagination and sense of adventure. I did two, and Chris Burke, the wonderful caricaturist, illustrated them. They were lovely, but aſter the experience, I kept thinking, “This isn’t the time to be doing this”. Now that my daughter is 30, I just kept thinking, “I want to write and I want to write for kids because most of the things I enjoy are novels for children.” Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is a great example but also those books I read as a kid, like Emil and the Detectives, the Just William books and Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. They spoke to me.


I hope I can do that for somebody in 30 years’ time, if a kid then reads my book from now and says, “Wow, that was fun.”


Text by TomTivnan


The Boy with Wings tackles some difficult subjects—bullying, racism to name a couple—but with humour. Why did you want to write about these issues? You can hold tragedy and comedy in your head at the same time. I was on a plane once and there was a noise from the cockpit that sounded very much like, “Danger, Will Robinson” and we were told to strap in... there were thumps and ka-thumps, and then the plane angled itself and headed towards the ground. We all screamed and thought we were going to die. I held on to my loved ones, closed my eyes and the next thing, there was a ka-thump, bump, ka-thump and the plane levelled out, and everybody clapped and laughed, and cheered. I thought, “That is humanit. That is who we are.” We have just experienced the most awful feeling in the world and the minute the plane righted itself, we laughed and clapped. I want to write like that: to have all the serious things


18 22nd March 2022


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