This coming week in Sydney the Queen will be hosting an event celebrating one of her greatest loves – books. As a little girl growing up in rural England, Camilla and her siblings adored reading.
“When we were children, every night my father, who was passionate about books, read us a story. He sat on the end of our beds and we had all these extraordinary stories that took us off on very exciting adventures to different parts of the world,” the Queen told me in an exclusive interview for The Weekly at Clarence House in London in 2022.
“There weren’t aeroplanes to go abroad. We mostly spent our holidays in Britain. So these exotic countries and places all became a magical world that we escaped to every night. We had all our favourite heroes and heroines. I think it became endemic in my system. I’ve never been able to stop reading ever since.”
The ‘Queen’s Reading Room’ charity is one of Her Majesty’s organic success stories, a burgeoning initiative that started online and has attracted big names in the world of literature and the arts.
“Her Majesty is one of the most well-read individuals I’ve ever met – but she’s also as passionate about encouraging other people to discover the joy of reading and become life-long readers themselves,” says the charity’s CEO Vicki Perrin.
“During lockdown, she shared a list of book recommendations – the response to which was phenomenal and realising there was clearly an audience for book recommendations, she later launched ‘The Reading Room’ on Instagram in January 2021 with Charlie Mackesy and his wonderfully illustrated The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. Since then, there have been 16 complete seasons with four widely different but equally compelling books featuring in each.”
Vicki is incredibly proud of the Reading Room, which differs from other book clubs because of the enticing depth of its content – a veritable chocolate box for book lovers of all ages and tastes.
“The Queen’s Reading Room isn’t just a book club: we provide free content 365 days a year through exclusive interviews with the authors who have masterfully built the worlds we encounter in the pages of the novels we feature,” Vicki tells me.
“Through these interviews – and through other behind-the-scenes content, The Queen’s Reading Room seeks to advance education by providing opportunities for the appreciation of literature, introducing and celebrating books from around the world.”
Australians have immediately jumped on board and currently 612,000 of us are using the Reading Room every year.
“Australia also accounts for 12.6% of our podcast listenership. In our first three seasons we were lucky enough to feature the likes of Kate Mosse, Peter James, Ian Rankin and Min Jin Lee (to name but a few!).
“We found out which books Peter James can’t live without, and which novels inspired Min Jin when she first moved to the US. It’s these surprising details which our audience really appreciate and engage with – because they realise that authors really are just like them: They all have their own favourite reads for their own personal reasons,” notes Vicki.
“I think Australians are attracted to the breadth of literature we cover. The Queen is so well read and reads a wide variety of genres, so this is obviously reflected in her picks. What we’re also seeing is an appetite for book clubs in general in Australia.”
The charity produces live pop-up literary events all over the UK and an annual literary festival at Hampton Court attended by more than 10,500 visitors – perfect for Aussies on their summer European holiday.
Queen Camilla attracts huge names and when I was lucky enough to attend the festival I saw Dame Judi Dench performing on an alfresco stage citing Shakespeare. A truly magical night. This year the festival featured Helena Bonham Carter and Miriam Margolyes.
As a charity Vicki says The Queen’s Reading Room “is committed to better understanding the benefits of reading and recently published its first neuroscientific study into the link between reading fiction and wellness, which proved that just five minutes of reading can reduce stress levels by almost 20%, improve concentration and focus by as much as 11%, and enable readers to feel better connected to each other. We’d like people to eventually think of getting their five minutes of reading in, in the same way that they think about eating five fruit and veg or getting in their 10,000 steps.”
On the Australian royal tour Vicki says the Queen will be “celebrating the Reading Room’s international reach and the rise of book club participation” with a very special event….
You can read all about that event in my on the ground report on womensweekly.com.au.
Visit The Queen’s Reading Room at thequeensreadingroom.co.uk
