The Queen’s Reading Room Festival: Tickets Now On Sale

Sunday 11th June at Hampton Court Palace, London

Dame Judi Dench | Gyles Brandreth | Ben Macintyre David Harewood | Robert Harris | Kamila Shamsie Ben Miles and many more

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 Queen Camilla

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 Queen Camilla to inspire your curiosity and delight your imagination.

Find out more here.

Tickets Now On Sale

The Queen’s Reading Room Festival

The Queen’s Reading Room Launch

Speeches by Her Majesty Queen Camilla and Gyles Brandreth

Season 10

Season 10 of The Queen’s Reading Room is opening our eyes to the dazzling magic of Gabriel García Márquez’ ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’; the history of India and Partition in Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’; the heart-wrenching story of the search for a lost love in occupied France in Sebastian Faulks’ ‘Charlotte Gray’; and the inspiring story of a tenacious and brilliant woman scientist in the 1950s in Bonnie Garmus’ ‘Lessons in Chemistry’. Click on each book below for author interviews, historical background and more. And follow along on Instagram @thequeensreadingroom

Gabriel García Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera

Vikram Seth

A Suitable Boy

Sebastian Faulks

Charlotte Gray

Plays & Playwrights

An interlude to explore some of the greatest plays of all time and the extraordinary people who create them and bring them to life on the stage

Season 9

Season 9 of The Queen’s Reading Room has taken us on a wondrous journey of discovery of Medieval France in ‘Labyrinth’; the birth of Christian Dior’s revolutionary New Look in ‘Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris’; the history of the British Raj in ‘The Far Pavilions’; and the pioneering women pilots who first dared take to the skies in ‘Great Circle’. Click on each book below for author interviews, historical background and more. And follow along with the current season on Instagram @thequeensreadingroom

Kate Mosse

Labyrinth

Paul Gallico

Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris

M. M. Kaye

The Far Pavilions

Maggie Shipstead

Great Circle

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

Children’s book recommendations

HRH The Princess of Wales

Online exclusive interview:

Elena Ferrante

Explore

Literary treasures

Roundtable

Judi Dench & Gyles Brandreth

Why is reading important?

Roundtable

Hilary Mantel & Philippa Gregory

How to research a historical novel

In Conversation

Why should we read to children?

Walter Scott: when Queen Victoria read to Prince Albert

Windsor Castle Library

Watch

Austen: Sense And Sensibility

Windsor Castle Library

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.

A Suitable Boy

By Vikram Seth

Publish Date: 1993 Awards: 1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize

At its core, A Suitable Boy is a love story: the tale of Lata – and her mother’s – attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. At the same time, it is the…

A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

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Love in the Time of Cholera

By Gabriel García Márquez

Publish Date: 1985

Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza’s impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has…

Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel García Márquez

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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…

Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

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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…

The Far Pavilions

by M. M. Kaye

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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.…

Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris

by Paul Gallico

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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…

Labyrinth

by Kate Mosse

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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…

City Of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

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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…

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

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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…

Dracula

by Bram Stoker

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Friends of The Reading Room Recommend

Stay on your reading journey and be inspired by reading recommendations from your favourite authors and these lovers of literature

98-328-hugo-burnand-highrove-2021-high-res

His Majesty King Charles III

Delia Owens

Kazuo Ishiguro

William Boyd

Pick of the week

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed masterpiece is the first instalment in the Wolf Hall trilogy, tracing the rise of Thomas Cromwell under the cruel and capricious Henry VIII. A shrewd and ambitious self-made man, Cromwell emerges as a powerful force within the court, but even he is subject to the fickle wishes of a King who can offer favour as well as ruin. An impeccably researched and thoroughly immersive historical novel which…

Book Club Kits

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

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.

Moorland Mousie

By Golden Gorse

Moorland Mousie

by Golden Gorse

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The Explorer

By Katherine Rundell

The Explorer

by Katherine Rundell

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The Children Of The New Forest

By Frederick Marryat

The Children Of The New Forest

by Frederick Marryat

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Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone

By J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone

by J. K. Rowling

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Swallows And Amazons

By Arthur Ransome

Swallows And Amazons

by Arthur Ransome

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The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

By Charlie Mackesy

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

by Charlie Mackesy

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HM’s favourite books

For World Book Day

Reading Room Roundtables

Cressida Cowell & Katherine Rundell

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