The Queen’s Reading Room podcast will feature conversations with top authors, and revelations about the Queen’s own favourite reads – as well as some of her dilemmas.
She confesses in her first podcast that she is a hopeless mimic and so struggles to voice Harry Potter characters when she reads JK Rowling’s stories to her grandchildren. “I can’t mimic for love or money”, she says, but praises her husband for his own talent.
The King, she says, “does it brilliantly – he can do all the voices”.
In the first episode, the Queen talks to top crime novelist Peter James about how he dreams up his plots.
Other contributors include fellow crime writer Sir Ian Rankin and comedian and children’s novelist David Baddiel.
The podcast, which will be released weekly, is the latest attempt by the Queen to encourage reading for both children and adults.
It began with the publication of her reading recommendations during the 2020 Covid lockdown, and led to an online book club, launched in 2021, with author chats as well as the Queen’s tips for good reads. Her passion for books also saw her launch a literary festival.
She explained to her followers in 2021 that,“To me, reading is a great adventure. I’ve loved it since I was small and I’d love everybody else to enjoy it as much as I do. You can escape, and you can travel, and you can laugh and you can cry.”
Among her favourites as a pony-mad child was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, about a horse sold to cruel owners, which she said still makes her cry today.
More recent recommendations to her book club were Antoine Laurain’s The Red Notebook which Camilla says is “A clever, funny novel… a masterpiece of Parisian perfection”, and Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice – “A magical, colourful tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire”.
The Queen’s Reading Room is also a charity which produces free educational content through social channels and its website. Camilla is also patron of several other book charities, including the Royal Society of Literature, First Story and the National Literacy Trust.
In November the Trust opened the first of 25 Coronation Libraries which will be set up to commemorate the King and Queen’s Coronation with quiet spaces full of books in schools, to enhance pupils’ reading skills.
The Queen has also spoken out about threats to writing, with a comment in February last year amid a row in the Press about changes to the books of Willy Wonka author Roald Dahl.
“Please remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination,” the Queen said, and then added, with a smile, “Enough said”.
