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Actress and writer Emma Thompson has been awarded this year's Hay Festival Medal for Drama
Actress and writer Dame Emma Thompson has been awarded this year's Hay Festival Medal for Drama.
The Love Actually star was honoured at Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, where she spoke with author Elizabeth Day about the novels that shaped her life.
Hay Festival chief executive Julie Finch praised Thompson's "intelligence, absolute wit, humour and fearless" storytelling.
She said Thompson's career had given audiences "real insight into humanity" through her work on screen and in literature.
During the event, Thompson reflected on her childhood, feminism and the books that changed her life.
Thompson said the first novel she was inspired by was Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mr Tod, despite its dark themes.
"The reason it was one of my favourites is because it was the longest," she said.
She explained that she and her siblings would deliberately choose long bedtime stories to spend more time listening to their father read aloud, describing his voice as "honeyed".
She said those moments helped shape her lifelong love of language and storytelling.
Thompson said she admired Potter's writing because it "didn't talk down" or "patronise" children.
"Children are the sacred audience.
You must do your very best work for them because they're absorbing so much," she said.
Reflecting on her upbringing, she added that she felt "very, very lucky" to have been raised by parents who never patronised her, encouraging her intellectual curiosity from an early age.
Thompson said her love of reading continued into adulthood, with authors such as Jane Austen and fantasy writers shaping her imagination and worldview.
"Books devoured me, they ate me," she said.
"I couldn't stop reading them. I was addicted to story."
However, she said many of the female characters she encountered in literature left her feeling conflicted about her own identity.
"I didn't fit any of the patterns of any of the characters I was reading in my favourite books," she said.
"It was a conflicted time because I thought I'm not like those women so where do I go to find something that fits with what I feel about life and the appetites I have."
Reflecting on Victorian literature, she described many women writers as being "still women in disguise", referring to the restrictions and limited educational opportunities women faced at the time.
"I wonder how women were able to survive the constant beating down on them of people saying they shouldn't be writing," she said.
Thompson said she felt fortunate to grow up surrounded by books and intellectual discussion, but noted that many women historically had been denied the same opportunities.
"Women still don't have access to books, which we need to develop our minds," she said.
She also stressed the importance of access to the arts and education, saying they help people form opinions on everything from law and childcare to relationships and social behaviour.
Thompson also said the book that most changed her life was The Madwoman in the Attic, which she read as a student at the University of Cambridge.
She said: "I had no idea there was a different way to interpret the world."
She explained that the book opened her eyes to the "disguises" many Victorian women novelists were forced to adopt in order to be heard.
Thompson added that much of women's writing and experience has historically been overlooked because acknowledging it would have challenged social norms.
On her award win, Thompson, who looked shocked and thankful, said it was "beautiful" and she "shall wear it to bed".
