Queen Camilla has recalled secretly reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the passionate and controversial novel by DH Lawrence, as a teenager in the 1960s.
“As teenagers you read a lot of romances. It was the moment of Lady Chatterley, under our pillows, reading that by torchlight. You know the minute something is forbidden, you want to get hold of it,” she said about the novel that had been at the centre of an obscenity trial.
The Queen spoke about memorable moments in her own reading for BBC documentary The Book That Changed My Life, and about the life-changing power of literacy and books.
She gave a glimpse of how regular reading is part of her royal marriage: “It’s like the best tonic in the world. My husband and I actually read before dinner, just sitting quietly and reading.
“It’s very off-putting, I can’t get back into my book, or I’ll suddenly start weeping. But it’s a lovely, quiet time. I think it would be a complete and utter tragedy if books went forever,” she said.
The Queen also revealed more of her own youthful reading, saying she was “mesmerised” by Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities and its depiction of those watching the guillotine during the French Revolution.
“Those ghastly women sitting there knitting while everybody had their heads chopped off,” she said.
The Queen, who is 79 years old, said she was part of a generation of women who missed out on higher education, which made reading and books even more important.
“I left school quite young. In my day, women didn’t go to university, so I think reading has been most of my education,” she said.
The documentary shows the impact of reading on people in stressful circumstances – and that includes Omar, who discovered a love of reading while in prison.
Reading was a way of escaping the confines of a cell, at least in his imagination – and the book he remembers most was a tattered copy of Jack Higgins’s war thriller, The Eagle Has Landed.
Chatting to Omar after the screening of the documentary, he said that what struck him most about meeting the Queen was her “authenticity”.
He said that off camera she was genuinely interested in his role working in prison education – helping a prison population that’s facing chronic levels of illiteracy.
The pair also shared unexpected connections.
Camilla’s father, Bruce Shand, had also been a prisoner, in a different kind of captivity, as a prisoner of war captured in North Africa during the Second World War.
He had used books as an emotional escape tunnel, during two and a half years of imprisonment.
“He said he educated himself. He read every single book, from the Bible to the encyclopedia, whatever was there, he just sat there all day long and read and read. And I think that’s how he survived it,” said the Queen.
PA MediaShe remembered how her father didn’t want to talk about the war – “you bury it all because you’ve seen such horrendous things” – and so it was only when she read his memoir that she understood his experiences.
“It was written from the heart. I mean, I cried through most of it. I found it so moving. Because if you think, I didn’t know anything about it, and reading managed to get him through it.”
Omar said the Queen had recognised a connection.
“She talked about the parallels, her father found reading in a prisoner of war camp. She definitely recognised the resemblance… being in a place you don’t want to be and using books to escape it and then books elevating you on many levels,” he said.
Queen Camilla has been running her Queen’s Reading Room project for five years, a kind of mega book club, with festivals and events and outreach projects, such as bringing books to homeless shelters.
It’s part of her campaign to promote and protect the value of reading and to stop us becoming a culture of screen addicts.
Perhaps the most moving parts of the documentary are the stories of how books can become lifelines for people facing bereavement or intense loneliness.
PA MediaIan, from the north-east of England, spoke with heartbreaking candour about finding himself in a state of complete social isolation after the death of his mother.
“I used to sit with my head on the kitchen table, crying. It was such a difficult period of loneliness, of nothingness,” he said.
Reading and becoming part of a book group proved a lifesaver for him, coaxing him back to his own happy ending.
There’s a powerful testimony from Peter, a Merseyside truck driver, who had to admit that he wasn’t able to read and needed help, after the shame of having to keep inventing excuses to his children who wanted a bedtime story.
He was taught to read by an adult education project – and he proudly shows the copy of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that has become his own stepping stone to literacy.
Perhaps the most sobering statistic in this documentary is that there are eight million adults in the UK who struggle with even basic levels of literacy.
Speaking after the screening, Big Issue founder John Bird blamed the scourge of adult illiteracy on a long-term political failure in tackling the “inheritance of poverty”.
“We did not educate the people who found education difficult – and I was one of them,” he said, having learned to read as a youngster in prison.
“People were written off, now we’re paying for that,” he added.
On the Queen’s literacy campaign, he said she provided an important symbolic focus. He likened it to how sales of the Big Issue increase when Prince William helps to sell the magazine for the homeless.
“You don’t have to be a monarchist to buy into this idea – I wouldn’t say that I was a monarchist, but I do believe in the power of certain personalities to enable a lot of people to say I’m going to get stuck into this,” said Lord Bird.
“I think it’s wonderful books change people’s lives,” said the Queen, having revealed some clues about how books have turned the pages of her own story.
The Book That Changed My Life, BBC2, 14 October, 21.00 and iPlayer.
Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
