The Queen honours late author Dame Jilly Cooper and prepares for a starring role in a new novel
Queen Camilla offered thoughtful remarks as she carried out one of her favourite royal duties, celebrating the power of literature at the Cliveden Literary Festival.
King Charles’s wife attended the opening of the 2025 festival on Saturday, just hours after Buckingham Palace shared an update about her upcoming appearance in a bestselling author’s new book. Known for her lifelong love of reading, the Queen officially opened the event and hosted a special reception for writers, festival supporters, charity partners, and students from the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham.
In her speech, Camilla paid tribute to her late friend and author Dame Jilly Cooper, as well as several literary greats who had connections to Cliveden. She also mentioned “my husband’s great-great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria,” while reflecting on the property’s rich literary history.
The Palace highlighted a touching excerpt from her address:
“There are few houses and gardens in England that are quite as steeped in literature as this one. Rudyard Kipling stayed in the early 1900s. JM Barrie enjoyed strolling in the woods. George Bernard Shaw briefly came to escape the Blitz. Henry James and Edith Wharton holidayed here.”
Camilla continued, noting that Cliveden was praised in Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, inspired The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and even offers Ian Fleming’s famous Vesper Martini — a favourite of Dame Jilly Cooper.
The event came as excitement builds around Queen Camilla’s unexpected “starring role” in author Peter James’s latest instalment of his Roy Grace detective series. The upcoming novel, set in London rather than Brighton, is due for release later this month.
