Queen Camilla, despite being an advocate for literature and the arts, has opened up about her recent reading struggles.
“I binge read because I have so little time to read things on most days,” she says on her podcast, The Queen’s Reading Room. “I mean, I try, read three pages at night, fall immediately to sleep and have to re-read them again the next day!”
The Queen keeps a busy schedule of royal engagements so perhaps it’s no surprise she is forced, she says, to cram all her reading time into her time off. “So when you go on holiday I just load up all the books I want to read and I do literally binge read,” she adds.
Also appearing on the podcast, actor Richard E. Grant says he’s a self-confessed bookworm. “I have been a read-a-holic book collector ever since I was a little boy,” he admits.
“Being a lifelong collector of books, my house is absolutely crammed with them. The study in which I’m sitting now is rammed to the rafters with books on the shelves, on the floor, piled up next to my bed - and I also have a drawing room downstairs that is wall to wall books,” he says.
“If you’re asking if my books are organised alphabetically and colour-coded and all of that, no. That is a level of organisation that is way beyond me so they are higgledy-piggledy all over the place,” he adds.
The Queen’s Reading Room started as an online book club in 2021 during the pandemic, and has since grown into a global community of keen readers. Now, it is a registered charity and gave its name to the popular podcast.
