Queen Camilla has spent years championing reading and literacy.
Now, in a moving new BBC documentary, she has revealed for the first time the books she says “changed my life”.
Her choices span the humorous and the heartbreaking. Camilla recalls secretly reading a “forbidden” copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover under her pillow by torchlight, an early literary memory she clearly remembers with amusement.
But one of the most emotional books on her list is her late father’s account of his time as a Nazi prisoner of war. Camilla says she cried her way through every page, aware that the trauma of the conflict had left him unable to discuss those experiences with his family.
Those deeply personal memories help explain why the Queen believes the disappearance of books would be a “complete and utter tragedy”.
“It’s part of our heritage. If there’s no reading, personally, I think we might as well all give up because I don’t think we’d even be human any longer,” she says.
The Book That Changed My Life is a BBC Arts production inspired by Camilla’s literacy charity, The Queen’s Reading Room. The documentary will be broadcast on BBC Two on October 14.
It examines the life-changing impact of reading through the experiences of five people, including the Queen, whose lives were transformed by books during moments of personal need.
The Book That Changed My Life is a BBC Arts production inspired by Camilla’s literacy charity
Sarah Heward left behind her glamorous career at a prestigious wine company after reading Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, an account of the author’s journey across the Australian desert with four camels and a dog
Among those featured is Omar Mentesh, who suffered a horrific electrocution accident at the age of five. He left school with very limited literacy skills and began getting into trouble with police when he was just eight.
Mentesh entered prison for the first time at 15. While there, he discovered a copy of Jack Higgins’s The Eagle Has Landed in his cell—and quickly became absorbed in the story.
“I read it straight out of survival instinct, I needed to escape my thoughts,” he said.
Although it was several years before he ‘went straight’, he now works full-time with other prisoners, introducing them to literature as well as helping with training, employment and education to enable them to follow a different path on release.
With enormous candour Queen Camilla credits reading with ‘educating’ her after leaving school at just 16 with a single O level to her name, before attending a Swiss finishing school.
‘I left school quite young because in my day women didn’t go to universities. So I think reading has been most of my education,’ she explains.
‘You learn so much about people, about life. I think people who don’t read miss out so much. That’s why it’s so important to get people reading early.’
She reveals that both she and the King are avid readers – even though she finds his laughter as he reads can be annoying at times.
‘If it’s been quite a hard week, my grandchildren will say, “I completely chill out”. Switch off the phone and read. It’s like the best tonic in the world. You come out of it feeling better,’ she says.
‘My husband and I actually read before dinner. We just like sitting quietly and reading. He loves biographies and PG Wodehouse.
‘Occasionally, when I am deep in a book, I hear him roaring with laughter about something. 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. ‘
She also speaks with huge emotion about the memoir written by her late father, Bruce Shand, about his experiences during the Second World War.
‘We must have 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,’ she says.
‘I think a lot of people do see books as a lifeline. My father, he was captured at Al Alamein. Nearly at the end of the battle, when they’d almost captured Rommel, a sniper shot him through his face.
‘He was incredibly lucky because the bullet when in one side and out the other, didn’t touch his tongue or his teeth. He was taken to a prisoner of war camp and incarcerated for two and a half years.
‘In 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 and read and read. And that’s, I think, how he survived it.
‘Like all that generation, they never talked about the war. You bury it all because you’ve seen such horrendous things. So we’d never heard him speaking about his wartime experiences, but he wrote it all down in this book, Previous Engagements.
‘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.’
But it wasn’t all hard going, she admits.
‘We started off with Treasure Island and Peter Pan and all those lovely old classics. The Scarlet Pimpernel, that’s the other one. I was sort of obsessed at that time by the guillotine. I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities, I was sort of mesmerised by the tricoteuses, these ghastly women sitting there doing their knitting while everyone had their heads chopped off,’ she recalls.
Career criminal Omar Mentesh first went to prison when was 15, where he found a copy of The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins
Ian Kirby says his life was transformed following a traumatic incident involving an intruder at his Gateshead home which left him depressed and agoraphobic
‘And then as teenagers, you read a lot of romances. It was the moment of Lady Chatterley under our pillows reading that by torchlight. It’s, you know, the minute something’s forbidden, you want to get hold of it.’
Research shows that every day adults in the UK spend more than seven hours staring at a screen but only 24 minutes reading a book. Forty per cent of adults haven’t even picked one up in the last year.
Yet scientists have also shown that ten minutes reading a day can reduce stress levels by 20 per cent.
Camilla launched her own online reading club, The Queen’s Reading Room, in 2021.
Thinking a few thousand people at best might enjoy her recommendations, the initiative went viral and has blossomed into an independent charity of its own, reaching 12 million people across 184 countries.
She adds of the benefits of reading: ‘You’re not thinking of yourself when you’re reading, you can immerse yourselves in other people’s lives, and that does release the stress.’
Ian Kirby says his life was transformed following a traumatic incident involving an intruder at his Gateshead home which left him depressed and agoraphobic.
He was eventually persuaded to join a local book club where he picked up an autobiography of local boxing hero Glenn McCrory and hasn’t looked back since.
For truck driver Peter Lloyd, who was born partially deaf and felt particularly isolated at school, it was Harry Potter by JK Rowling that brought him out of his shell
‘The gift of reading has given me life, it’s given me my life back,’ he said.
Sarah Heward, meanwhile, turned her back on her glamorous life working for a prestigious wine company after reading a book by Robyn Davidson, Tracks, about her journey across the Australian desert with four camels and a dog.
She decided to also take a leap of faith and follow a dream with her partner, Steve. The pair married and bought an abandoned Little Chef in the Scottish highlands, turning it into a cafe.
Tragically Steve suddenly died just 13 months into their own adventure but Sarah re-read the book and decided not to give up.
‘The book gave me… a very strong narrative about perseverance, about determination and there were so many times that I was reading it and I was just captivated by it. I felt her pain when she was suffering. I could see myself,’ she said.
For truck driver Peter Lloyd, who was born partially deaf and felt particularly isolated at school, it was Harry Potter by JK Rowling that brought him out of his shell – and forged a new connection with his family.
The documentary ends with a unique book club meeting at Clarence House, the Queen’s private London residence, as she and her fellow readers meet to discuss their experiences over tea.
Mr Mentesh says: ‘Each book has brought us all here into one room, and that’s what I think is crazy. Even if you’re the Queen of England, actually a book can connect you.’
Camilla agrees: ‘It’s like having a pile of friends, you can pick one up when you need them, I think it’s wonderful. Books change people’s lives.’
The Book That Changed My Life will air on BBC Two and iPlayer on October 14
