11 June 2023 , 06:00
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As Queen Camilla’s first literary festival takes place today we talk to book charity boss Vicki Perrin about Her Majesty’s passion for reading.
Every up and down, every joy and heartbreak of Queen Camilla’s life has played out like the storyline of a best-selling novel.
It’s fitting, then, that books have been her comfort through often lonely and challenging times. Reading, Her Majesty has explained, has often been her salvation.
“If you learn to read, however difficult your life is at the time, you can pick up a book and you can escape. You can laugh, you can cry, it just takes you out of the real world and it gives you a different dimension to life.”
The feeling of warmth and comfort that reading provides spurred her on in January 2021 to set up what is now called The Queen’s Reading Room. Regularly recommending new reads, the initiative offers exclusive content and is, in Queen Camilla’s own words, “a resource, a reassurance and a refuge to all book lovers”.
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And speaking to us ahead of the Reading Room’s first literary festival today, the charity’s chief executive Vicki Perrin described the Queen as “the most well-read person” she has ever met.
King Charles with Queen Camilla at Clarence House (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)She tells us, “Her Majesty saw the potential for books to make us happier, better connected and as a great way to combat loneliness. There’s a special connection that can be forged around stories and talking about them with friends, family and even with total strangers.”
A deep love of reading is something that the Queen shares with her husband.
King Charles, who is himself an author, has featured in the Reading Room to recommend his favourite books. He clearly loves to share his passions with younger generations as Camilla previously revealed how he reads Harry Potter books to their grandchildren and “does all the different voices because he is a brilliant mimic”.
The Queen – who earlier this year appeared to comment on the censorship of Roald Dahl’s work during a speech to authors about their freedom of expression – also spoke about her and the King’s shared hobby in a Vogue interview to mark her 75th birthday in 2022.
“When we go away, the nicest thing is that we actually sit and read our books in different corners of the same room,” she explained. “It’s very relaxing because you know you don’t have to make conversation. You just sit and be together.”
Vicki smiles as she reveals the Queen’s love of all-things books is evident when you enter her sitting room. “I’ll pop in and we’ll have a cup of tea and chat about the books she wants to feature on the Reading Room for that month – it’s a fantastic sight.
“She’ll be sitting in her armchair and has piles upon piles of books surrounding her with more stacked high on every single table. Every surface that you can see is covered in books, even the floor has been taken over!”
Vicki adds, “The Queen’s love of books is deep-rooted. It’s genuine. It’s authentic and it’s so wide-ranging as well. She loves a good crime thriller as much as she loves a romance as much as she loves the classics. The range of books and the breadth of her reading taste is really quite extraordinary.”
She continues with a laugh, “I think she loves nothing more than being hit by that smell of a book when you open the cover. The feel of the pages and folding the corner down for the next time.”
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While the late Queen Elizabeth II spent her free time immersed in the worlds of horses and racing, Queen Camilla is more interested in the best-sellers’ lists.
Speaking about sharing books with one another, Vicki tells us, “We regularly swap titles and we are often racing to recommend a book to each other, especially ones which are upcoming – she has a really keen eye on what’s coming out. We have a lot of fun in predicting what will become a best-seller and raging when something hasn’t done as well as perhaps it should have done in the charts. There’s just so much fun and joy that she has for books, it’s wonderful.”
As for the long-term goals of the Reading Room charity, Vicki says, “We are hoping to become something of a driving force behind books in the UK, to put them back at the centre of the cultural agenda, and to help people become readers and to stay readers.
“We all have a journey and interaction with books across our lifetime. We might read as children, but when we become teenagers, it’s perhaps put on the back burner as we’re doing exams and reading for school, no longer for pleasure. The same goes as working parents. You will likely read to your young children but don’t have the time to read for yourself. So we’re working on a few really exciting projects to encourage and inspire and help young people to become lifelong readers.”
A focus on children’s literature would certainly have Her Majesty’s backing as she has heralded reading as “the foundation of learning”. Talking of her own childhood, she recalled her father, Major Bruce Shand, sitting on the end of her bed to read to her and sister Annabel. Queen Camilla said, “I still remember the intense excitement I felt as a child when choosing books to buy with my pocket money and the joy of knowing that these precious books, clutched tightly in my hands, were my very own.”
Our talk with Vicki comes as The Queen’s Reading Room stages its inaugural festival in the grounds of Hampton Court. With guests including Dame Judi Dench, Dame Harriet Walter, David Olusoga, Gyles Brandreth and Kate Mosse, it promises to be a glittering celebration of the written word.
With two stages, visitors can explore at leisure or take in performances by some of the country’s finest actors, including an insightful talk by Dame Judi Dench about her career, life and love for William Shakespeare, in a setting just metres away from where the Bard performed for King James I in 1604.
As well as a fitting tribute to late historic fiction writer Dame Hilary Mantel, there will also be a comedy performance by the cast of the award-winning play Austentatious as they improvise a hilarious new Jane Austen novel, inspired entirely by a title to be dreamt up by the Queen.
Vicki says, “What we’re hoping to achieve is a real sense of fun, of theatre, of energy at this event. It’s so often the case that people might go to a literary festival and feel like they need to be an avid reader to appreciate what’s going on on the stage. We want our event to be accessible to everyone.
“It will have actors and experts and authors all brought together to create this sense of theatre. I love the fact that we’re kicking off with
a comedy and a Jane Austen parody which Her Majesty has named. It’s possibly the sort of thing you might not expect from us, but I’m hoping that it will intrigue people and catch their imaginations.
“It’s also in the setting of Hampton Court Palace, which is just so wonderful. You walk along its corridors and in its courtyards, and you almost feel and hear the stories in it as a building.
“We feel incredibly privileged to have this opportunity to bring some of the UK’s greatest historical fiction writers to a place like Hampton Court. We’ve got authors Philippa Gregory and Kate Mosse coming down to this site, which has literally been an inspiration to them. Hopefully, it will feel like an incredibly atmospheric and inspirational place to be for this festival as well.”
In addition, the Reading Room has given 2,500 free tickets to NHS staff, charity workers and members of the Armed Forces, with Vicki saying, “The hope is that it’s a day where we can really celebrate some of our nation’s heroes and give them a lovely day out.”
Looking ahead she adds, “In terms of the festival, what we hope is that this is the start of a long-term project. We want the festival to come back next year, bigger and better. The dream is that we might introduce a children’s stage and that it will become a multi-day event to welcome hundreds of more people.
“It would be fantastic for it to grow on a much broader, wider spectrum with some of the incredible sorts of books, authors and genres that we all love. So we hope that this is a little launchpad for a much greater future and creates a real legacy project for Her Majesty.”