REQUIRED READING: 'HER MAJESTY LOVES A GOOD ROMANCE'

AS THE QUEEN BEGINS A NEW CHAPTER IN HER LIFE, CHARITY BOSS VICKI PERRIN TELLS US ABOUT CAMILLA’S PASSION FOR PAGE-TURNERS

-  REBECCA RUSSELL

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. 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 is, in Queen Camilla’s own words, “a resource, a reassurance and a refuge to all book lovers”.

And speaking to us ahead of the Reading Room’s first literary festival on Sunday 11 June, the charity’s chief executive Vicki Perrin described the Queen as “the most well-read person” she has ever met. 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.”

A deep love of reading is something that the Queen shares with her husband. King Charles, an author himself, has featured in the Reading Room to recommend his favourite books.