Queen Camilla has revealed that the King loves reading biographies and will occasionally “roar” with laughter when they read before dinner. The comments were made in the BBC Arts programme The Book That Changed My Life, which is due to air next week.
In the programme, Camilla meets a former prisoner, an HGV driver, a man who became depressed after an incident at home, and a roadside cafe owner for what she called “one of the most unusual book club meetings I have ever attended” in a message delivered to a press preview. The documentary sees the Queen explore the transformative power of reading, meeting four people whose lives have been changed by books.
Reading before dinner
The Queen tells the documentary about her own love for reading, as well as the King’s and also her late father’s. She says reading is “like the best tonic in the world”.
She says: “My husband and I actually read before dinner, we just like sitting quietly and reading.” The King loves biographies, the Queen says, adding: “I occasionally, when I’m deep in a book, hear him roaring with laughter about something. It’s very off-putting. I can’t get back into my book.”
She adds “it’s a lovely quiet time” and “I think it would be a complete and utter tragedy if books went forever”.
Early love of reading
Camilla tells the documentary about where her love of reading came from. She says: “I left school quite young… so I think reading has been most of my education. We must’ve been very, very young when my father started reading to us. I think that’s where my love of reading came from. We were transported into all sorts of other worlds. I don’t think our childhood would’ve been the same if we hadn’t had books. We started off with Treasure Island and Peter Pan, all those lovely old classics. You learn so much about people, about life. I think people who don’t read miss out so much. That’s why I think it’s so important to get children reading early.”
Major Bruce Shand served in the Second World War as a 12th Lancer, fought alongside the Desert Rats, received the Military Cross twice and was wounded and taken prisoner while fighting in North Africa. The Queen recounts memories of her father and his experience being held in a German prisoner of war camp when reading reinforced a lifelong enthusiasm for the written word.
Father's wartime story
“A sniper shot him through his face, he was incredibly lucky because the bullet went in one side, out the other, didn’t touch his tongue or his teeth,” she says. “He was taken to a prisoner of war camp and incarcerated for two and a half years. Those places, there’s not much to do unless you’re plotting your escape. So he said he educated himself because he read every single book, from the bible to the encyclopaedia, whatever was there, he just sat all day long and read, read, read, and that’s, I think, how he survived it. Like all that generation, they never talked about the war. He buried it all because he’d seen such horrendous things. So we never heard him speaking about his wartime experiences, but he wrote it all down in this book, Previous Engagements.”
The Queen reads an excerpt from the book, then says: “It was written from the heart. I mean, I cried through most of it. I found it so moving, because I didn’t know anything about it and reading managed to get him through it.”
In a message from the Queen delivered at a preview screening of the programme this week, she said books “have certainly enriched my own life beyond measure”. She added: “While I find it impossible to point to a single title or author, or even to a single genre, that stands above others, reading for pleasure has helped entertain, comfort and inspire me in so many ways over the years. I have long believed that books are in fact the very best form of escapism, transporting us to other places and into other lives – other hearts and minds – in ways that greatly enhance our own. That is why, five years ago, I launched my Queen’s Reading Room, an online space I hoped would foster in adults and children alike a lifelong love of literature, and connect more people with that special magic that can only be found in the leaves of a book.”
'Books change people's lives'
Camilla said it is her “fondest hope that this film will build on that work, helping demonstrate to audiences around the world just what a difference reading has made to one particular group of people, each of whom has faced challenge or difficulty in their personal lives, and each of whom has been lifted up by the sheer joy and transformative power of reading”.
One of the documentary’s contributors, Ian Kirby, from Gateshead, fell into a deep depression after a traumatic incident at home. He turned his life around after joining a local book club and picking up the autobiography of local boxing hero, Glenn McCrory, which offered a new perspective on his own experiences. Now he describes himself as living a rich and fulfilled life, with reading at the heart of his recovery. Speaking in the documentary, he says: “That is the beauty of a book. It can give you experiences you’ve never experienced, but they can also be an inspiration.”
The Queen ended the documentary by saying “books change people’s lives”. The Book That Changed My Life will air on BBC Two and iPlayer on October 14.
