Leaders of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) are stepping down amid an escalating internal conflict over diversity reforms and accusations of failing to uphold free speech, leaving its distinguished fellows divided and its reputation under scrutiny. Critics argue the leadership has prioritised political sensitivities over the society’s fundamental literary values, exposing fault lines within the 205-year-old institution renowned for fostering literary excellence.
Director Molly Rosenberg and chairman Daljit Nagra are at the centre of the storm, and have now announced their resignations ahead of the society’s upcoming AGM, where significant reforms are expected to be discussed.
Rosenberg has faced accusations of “dumbing down” the society through reforms aimed at diversifying the “elitist” charity, while Nagra’s tenure has been marked by controversies over governance and free expression. The tensions came to a head following what many perceived as the RSL’s lukewarm response to the near-fatal stabbing of Sir Salman Rushdie in 2022 and broader concerns about the society’s stance on contentious issues.
The attack on Rushdie, a fellow of the society, occurred during a public event in New York, where he was stabbed multiple times by an Islamist sympathiser, leaving him gravely injured and blind in one eye. The author and British citizen has lived with a bounty on his head ever since his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Satanic Verses, attracted the ire of Islamists the world over after it was published in 1988. Hardline clerics, community leaders, and protesters condemned it as blasphemous. Copies were burnt, protests organised, and effigies of the author hanged, until eventually this agitation caught the attention of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued his fatwa in 1989, offering $3 million to anyone who would kill the author, or anyone involved in its publication and distribution.
Following the on-stage stabbing, Iran’s foreign ministry said the author “and his supporters are to blame for what happened to him”. The man charged with Rushdie’s attempted murder is Hadi Matar, whose social media showed sympathies for Shia extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
Despite the gravity of the incident, the RSL delayed issuing a public statement, eventually offering only a brief message of “strength” to the author. Former RSL president Dame Marina Warner said that when she urged the organisation’s new leaders to do more, she was told they “would not post a pledge of support for Rushdie after he had been nearly murdered” because “it might give offence”.
During a previous AGM, when the RSL’s leadership was asked by the novelist Maggie Gee why they had not defended Rushdie, the question was brushed aside by the platform. Following the meeting, the biographer Miranda Seymour asked Rosenberg the same question and was told it was because “we are not a political organisation and so we cannot speak for all fellows since they may have different views”. (Different views about ideologically motivated attempted murder?)
One of the newer fellows, novelist Karin Altenberg, said she was shocked by the tense and intimidating atmosphere when Rushdie was mentioned. She said: “Afterwards I thanked one of those who had been very eloquent on the Rushdie issue from the floor, and she told me that she had been afraid to speak up. This saddened me, that a distinguished writer should feel nervous about addressing the issue of freedom of speech at a meeting of the RSL seems wrong.”
Current RSL president Bernardine Evaristo has since defended the RSL’s inaction following the ideologically motivated, life-changing attack on Sir Salman. Writing for The Guardian, the Booker Prize-winning author said it was important for the organisation not to “take sides in writers’ controversies and issues”. However, this position was widely rebuked by fellows who argued that neutrality in the defence of free speech is untenable for a literary institution.
The society has faced additional allegations of censorship. In 2024, its in-house magazine, Review, delayed publication over an article critical of Israel. Former editor Maggie Fergusson alleged that Rosenberg had been unhappy with the piece, prompting its removal from print at the last minute. While the RSL later claimed the article was published in full, the incident led prominent authors, including Ian McEwan and Alan Hollinghurst, to demand the society’s referral to the Charity Commission for contravening literary values. The RSL subsequently did so, but only after citing what it describes as a “sustained campaign of misinformation being made against us, and the potential for reputational damage in media reporting”. The society also issued a statement saying that Ms Rosenberg had the “full support” of trustees.
Following the death of the travel writer and sex-change pioneer Jan Morris in 2020, the RSL commissioned an obituary from her friend and biographer Derek Johns. Yet when the piece eventually appeared in the RSL’s annual magazine, it had been edited, with references to Jan Morris’s pre-gender reassignment status as ‘James’ excised. When the Times asked RSL director Molly Rosenberg about these edits, she told them the obituary had been “deeply offensive to herself and the trans community more broadly”, and that in ‘deadnaming’ Jan and describing her as “a remarkably manly man” Johns had effectively committed wrongthink. Rosenberg added that she was responsible for the edits, and they were undertaken “entirely to defend Jan’s reputation and to honour her memory, in particular her status as a champion for the trans community.”
In a statement, Johns and Maggie Fergusson, the former RSL director who commissioned the obituary, said they “deeply resent Molly Rosenberg impugning their professional integrity, and strongly dispute her claims”. The statement adds that Morris “would have powerfully objected to being described as ‘a champion for the trans community’,” and that “Molly Rosenberg never met Jan and knows nothing at all about her”.
Tensions have been further exacerbated by what some see as a lack of support for embattled fellows. Author Kate Clanchy, who is herself a society fellow, was cancelled and dropped by her publisher after online reviewers began denouncing her award-winning book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, over a handful of sentences that deployed what they described as racial stereotypes (e.g., describing a black child’s skin as “chocolate-coloured”), while also alleging that Clanchy had indulged in ‘ableism’ (e.g., describing two autistic children as “unselfconsciously odd”). Clanchy resigned her fellowship after the RSL failed to issue a statement in her defence. Adding to the controversy, one of her most vocal critics, Sunny Singh, was later made a fellow.
The society’s attempts to diversify its fellowship have also sparked division. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the RSL adopted reforms allowing the public to nominate fellows, a move intended to welcome writers from underrepresented backgrounds. Critics, including former presidents Dame Marina Warner and Colin Thubron, argued that these changes diluted the fellowship’s standards by removing the requirement for nominees to have produced two works of “outstanding literary merit.”
Following her resignation, Ms Rosenberg said: “I am hugely proud of all that I have achieved in my time at the RSL, working for and with brilliant writers across the fellowship.” Ms Evaristo said: “I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Molly and Daljit for their immense contribution to the society over many years.”
As the RSL prepares for its next AGM, calls for transparency and a renewed commitment to literary and free speech values are mounting.
There’s more on this story here.
