A speech by Her Majesty The Queen at a Reception to mark the launch of The Queen’s Reading Room Medal

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a huge pleasure to welcome you all to Clarence House this evening, to mark the fourth anniversary of my Reading Room and to thank you for supporting our work. 

Those of you who follow my Reading Room on Instagram (which I hope is all of you!) will have seen that my most recent recommendation is Jane Austen’s first, anonymously-published novel, “Sense and Sensibility”. Interestingly, one of the first people to buy her book was the future King George 4th, who paid 15 shillings for it two days before it was publicly advertised. He liked it so much that, two years later, he bought a second copy. I have here the original receipt from his first purchase and his 1813 edition of the novel, which you are all welcome to look at later. 

This year, of course, is the 250th anniversary of Jane’s birth. Her voice and characters remain as fresh, witty and true to life as ever: who among us has not encountered the pomposity of a Mr Collins, the dastardly attractiveness of a Willoughby or the gossipy meddling of an Emma? 

Another admirer of Jane’s was my husband’s great great great grandmother, Queen Victoria, who found her books “admirably written…interesting and entertaining”. I think that all of us here would, at the very least, describe your books, poems and plays as “admirably written…interesting and entertaining” – we might even go so far as to be “much amused” by them. We are certainly greatly in their debt. After all, the magic of story-telling lies in its ability to make a community of anyone who loves to read and who is compelled to write. Through literature, we experience life through another’s eyes, we are comforted, strengthened, we laugh, we cry, we travel to different lands, and we escape the real world. In short, books, and those who create them, make life better….much better – so thank you! 

Making life better is the ultimate aim of my Reading Room. We believe that books make for a happier, healthier and more connected society. We know from our scientific research that reading brings invaluable benefits to brain and mental health and we see firsthand the impact stories have on how we understand, and articulate, the world both as we find it, and as we dream it to be.

As we shall hear in a moment from Vicki, we are putting our efforts as a charity into leveraging the unique power of books to help rebuild lives and are committed to taking them into places where they are so badly needed and often so sadly absent. 

From its humble beginnings (amid the voices of quite a few naysayers), my Reading Room now reaches over 12 million people in 173 countries each year, with nearly 20,000 visitors to our festivals to date. It is because of the gift of writers like you, and because of the passion of every person in this room for promoting literacy and a love of literature, that we have been able to build such a family of readers. Long may we continue to be inspired by you all! 

And if I dare end with a piece of literary advice, I shall leave you with one final quote from Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”: If a book is well written, I always find it too short.