With their extraordinary power to educate and inspire, books – from authors around the globe – have enriched my life since I was a child. It has therefore been such a joy to watch my Reading Room grow over the years into a thriving book community. Now a charity, I hope that we, together with our partners, can 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.

~ Her Majesty The Queen Consort



The Queen’s Reading Room is a charity working to provide opportunities for the appreciation of literature among adults and children in the UK and around the world. We seek to advance education by closing the gap between writers and readers through accessible, educational and free literary content available year-round. Our purpose is to help more people find and connect with books which enrich their lives and turn them into lifelong readers. You’ll find on this website reading recommendations, author interviews, never-before-seen archive and lots more, carefully selected by our board of trustees and their expert advisors for their educative, literary and historic merit.

Join us in reading the selected books each season, or delve into this website to discover more about the books and authors selected by Her Majesty The Queen Consort to inspire your curiosity and delight your imagination.

Find out more here.

Tickets Now On Sale

The Queen’s Reading Room Festival


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The Queen’s Reading Room Launch

Speeches by Her Majesty The Queen Consort and Gyles Brandreth


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Books keep our minds fresh and our hearts open.

There is perhaps no greater exercise in empathy than reading a book: placing oneself in another’s shoes, travelling the world and meeting its people. Reading teaches us the value and power of our imagination, as our minds paint pictures to the words and conjure new worlds we may never have dreamed of. And when we realise that power, young or old, who knows what we can achieve. Finding a great book is special; but coming together over a shared love of a story is a very precious thing indeed.

Check out our Books page for stories to make your soul soar, expand your horizons, or simply provide a gentle comfort in times when the world seems dark. Read along with us on our Instagram page, where writers and readers interact, where the reading experience is enriched by education, and where the love of a great story is shared.

Exploring the life and works of

Agatha Christie


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Children’s book recommendations

HRH The Princess of Wales


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Online exclusive interview:

Elena Ferrante


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Find your next book

Click on each book to access background and exclusive content to enrich your reading experience.
Enjoy interviews with authors, historians, academics and experts.

  • Great Circle

    By Maggie Shipstead

    Publish Date: 2021
    Marian Graves is a daring aviator determined to be the first to fly around the world north-south over the poles. In 1950, near the end of her historic attempt, she vanishes in Antarctica. Hadley Baxter is a scandal-plagued movie star…
  • The Far Pavilions

    By M. M. Kaye

    Publish Date: 1978
    This epic, sweeping romance tells the story of Ashton Pelham-Martyn, an English man brought up as a Hindu, and his undying love for Juli, an Indian princess. Inspired by Kaye’s childhood in India, her family’s experiences of military life and…
  • Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris

    By Paul Gallico

    Publish Date: 1958
    Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant’s wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life – a Dior dress.…
  • Labyrinth

    By Kate Mosse

    Publish Date: 2005
    Three secrets. Two women. One Grail … July 1209: in Carcassonne a 17-year-old girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and…
  • City Of Girls

    By Elizabeth Gilbert

    Publish Date: 2019
    New York, 1940. Vivian, a young girl exiled by her parents, arrives in the big city with her sewing machine. At the Lily Playhouse, a rather disreputable yet charming Manhattan revue theatre, she makes a new family and learns to…
  • The Book Thief

    By Markus Zusak

    Publish Date: 2006
    A novel described as ‘unsettling, life-affirming, triumphant and tragic’, The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany and tells the story of nine-year-old Liesel and her love for books, books which she steals wherever she can find them. But when…
  • Dracula

    By Bram Stoker

    Publish Date: 1897
    A tale which has fascinated readers for over a century and filled them with terror, Dracula is a masterpiece of Gothic fiction narrated through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. The mysterious Count Dracula, a vampire from Transylvania who survives…
  • The Whalebone Theatre

    By Joanna Quinn

    Publish Date: 2022
    Despite her adverse circumstances, young Cristabel Seagrave has big dreams for her life and is determined to write her own story. When a whale washes up on the Dorset shore, she plants her flag, and the inanimate carcass becomes the…
  • Dark Tides

    By Philippa Gregory

    Publish Date: 2020
    The second volume in the trilogy of The Fairmile Series, Dark Tides continues the sweeping saga of the Tidelands family. When two unexpected visitors show up at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the river Thames, Alinor…


Pick of the week

Jack Aubrey Novels


Adventurous and gripping, the Jack Aubrey novels comprise twenty completed volumes and one unfinished set during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin. In 2004, O’Brian’s unfinished novel was published posthumously. The series received international acclaim and was adapted into the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.


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Book Club Kits


Have you introduced your book club to The Queen’s Reading Room?

Download our book club kits for conversation starters…
which may turn into bookish debate!

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The Island

Victoria Hislop

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War Horse

Michael Morpurgo

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The Light Years

Elizabeth Jane Howard

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The Various Haunts of Men

Susan Hill

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The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

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The Red Notebook

Antoine Lauraine

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A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

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Girl

Edna O’Brian

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The Book of Dust

Philip Pullman

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The Architect’s Apprentice

Elif Shafak

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Restless

William Boyd

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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

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The Mirror and the Light

Hilary Mantel

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The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Charlie Mackesy

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Children’s Books

Explore this selection of brilliant titles, as chosen by Her Majesty The Queen Consort for The Reading Room.

HM’s favourite books

For World Book Day


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Reading Room Roundtables

Cressida Cowell & Katherine Rundell


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