Melvyn Bragg, Richard Dawkins, Ian McEwan, Mike Leigh, Ben Okri, Simon Russell Beale and Simon Schama will be among those reading at an anthology launch at the National Theatre next month. In Poems that make Grown Men Cry, edited by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden, 100 leading male figures in in literature and film, science and architecture, theatre and human rights confess to being moved to tears by certain poems. Other celebrities include John le Carré, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Radcliffe, Nick Cave, Stephen Fry, and Colin Firth. Poems in the anthology include works by WH Auden, Thomas Hardy, AE Housman and Philip Larkin. The book is designed to raise money for Amnesty International. Kate Allen, British director of Amnesty, said: "Gender stereotyping is dangerous because it represses ability and ambition, encourages discrimination and upholds social inequalities that are often a root cause of violence. We hope that this anthology will encourage boys, in particular, to know that crying – and poetry – isn't just for girls.”

The reading at the National is at 6pm on Tuesday 29 April.