Queen Reflects on Secretly Reading 'Forbidden' Lady Chatterley's Lover as a Teenager
Queen Camilla has recalled secretly reading Lady Chatterley's Lover, the passionate and controversial novel by D.H. Lawrence, as a teenager in the 1960s.
"As teenagers you read a lot of romances. It was the moment of Lady Chatterley, under our pillows, reading that by torchlight. You know the minute something is forbidden, you want to get hold of it," she said about the novel that had been at the centre of an obscenity trial.
In a BBC documentary titled The Book That Changed My Life, the Queen spoke about memorable moments in her own reading and the life-changing power of literacy and books.
She shared a glimpse into how regular reading is part of her royal marriage: "It's like the best tonic in the world. My husband and I actually read before dinner, just sitting quietly and reading. He loves biographies, and P.J. Wodehouse. I occasionally, when I'm deep in a book, 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 added.
The Queen also revealed more of her own youthful reading, saying she was "mesmerised" by Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and its depiction of those watching the guillotine during the French Revolution.
"Those ghastly women sitting there knitting while everybody had their heads chopped off," she said.
At 79 years old, the Queen revealed that she was part of a generation of women who missed out on higher education, which made reading and books even more important: "I left school quite young. In my day, women didn't go to university, so I think reading has been most of my education."
The documentary also features Omar, who discovered a love for reading while in prison. Reading was a way of escaping the confines of a cell, at least in his imagination—and the book he remembers most was a tattered copy of Jack Higgins' war thriller, The Eagle Has Landed.
Chatting to Omar after the screening of the documentary, he said that what struck him most about meeting the Queen was her "authenticity."