Our Charity Partners
For 2026, Henley Literary Festival are proud to partner with the following organisations:
The Ovarian Care Fund was selected as a partner this year, prompted by a personal connection and circumstances, and for fitting so well with the Festival’s aim of inspiring and informing with expertise from a wide range of fields:
At Imperial Health Charity we help our hospitals do more through grants, arts, volunteering and fundraising – above and beyond what the NHS can provide on its own. One of these key areas is our Ovarian Care Fund. The fund provides extra support for research into advanced ovarian cancer in women. This vital work is being led by Professor Christina Fotopoulou, one of the country’s leading experts in ovarian cancer, and her team at Imperial College London.
Through the Ovarian Care Fund, we’re supporting ground-breaking new research into this life-threatening condition by providing support in three key areas. We fund skilled staff to allow the team to carry our vital lab work, as well as essential equipment required for the research programme, including tools used to understand the way the disease spreads and test its response to drug treatments. We also fund the purchase of vital materials used in the lab to detect different proteins in cancer tissues and grow cancer cells to investigate how they respond to drugs.
With your help, we can take significant steps in the fight against this deadly disease.
In this National Year of Reading, we’re delighted to be partnering with Bookmark Reading Charity, who are doing remarkable work to make reading more accessible, engaging and enjoyable for young people:
We’re Bookmark Reading Charity, and we want every child to read.
We exist to change children’s life stories through the joy of reading. When children discover a love of books, they don’t just improve their literacy -they build confidence and foundations for brighter futures.
Across England, one in four children leave primary school unable to read well. This can limit their opportunities at school and beyond.
That’s why, through our 10 programmes, we work to promote a reading for pleasure culture in primary schools in disadvantaged communities – where the need is greatest. We provide high-quality, diverse books and reading materials, funding for dedicated reading spaces, teacher training and regular one-to-one reading support for children who need it most.
We’re a small charity with big ambitions. By 2027, we aim to support half a million children and partner with 1,000 primary schools across England.
Last academic year we reached over 180,000 children across nearly 400 primary schools, delivered more than 40,000 One-to-one Reading Programme sessions and donated over 70,000 books to schools.
We’ve worked hard to scale our reach and deepen our impact to support more children. But none of this would be possible without our brilliant volunteers. By giving just one hour a week, online or face-to-face, Bookmark volunteers help children build confidence and fall in love with stories.