A speech by Her Majesty The Queen at the Charleston Festival 2024

Good morning everybody, I'm sorry about the weather, I lived in Sussex for many years and it was always sunny. 

As the proud Patron of Charleston, I am delighted to welcome you all to this year's Literary Festival, in a place rightly described by a previous resident as "an earthly paradise".

I was asked before I came to think of an author whose books I loved when I was the same age as some of you children.

It is always hard to choose one favourite writer, because there are so many out there, but I have selected a Victorian novelist who died exactly 100 years ago.

I hasten to add that, whatever you might suspect, I am not actually Victorian myself.

Now, Frances Hodgson Burnett was someone, like all of us, who understood the incredible thrill of reading.

She wrote The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess, amongst many others, she wrote of one of her characters: 'Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book'.

I think many of us could identify with that.

Frances also, most famously, understood the enticing mystery of secret gardens, just like the one here.

After all, books and gardens have an awful lot in common. Frances knew this, as did the famous authors who lived here at Charleston did as well.

They knew that books and gardens are faithful friends to whom we can always turn to. 

They both have the ability to comfort, to cheer and to connect us with people and nature, reminding us that we aren't alone.

And they both exert a powerful magic over our imaginations.

Mary Lennox, the heroine of the story, finds that "the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles".

She could easily have discovered the same phenomenon in the library at Misselthwaite Manor, where she lived.

 Now I think it's time for us to experience a bit of magic for ourselves. So, without further ado, let me declare today's Festival open!

And let me leave you with a final word from Frances: 'Everything's a story - You are a story - I am a story'. Thank you."