Duchess of Cornwall says it is ‘very much a parent’s job’ to teach reading early

Camilla spoke with The Telegraph’s Daisy Buchanan via video call for her online Reading Room platform.

The Duchess of Cornwall during a visit to Holywood Arches Library, Belfast, part of her longstanding commitment to encouraging literacy and reading, on second day of their two-day royal visit to Northern Ireland (Russell Cheyne/PA) (PA Wire)

The Duchess of Cornwall has stressed the importance of learning how to read early in life and said it is “very much a parent’s job” to get their children reading “very young”.

Speaking via video call for her online Reading Room group, Camilla also revealed which books are currently on her bedside table and what her desert island read would be.

The duchess spoke on the call with Daisy Buchanan, an author who writes for The Daily Telegraph, while she was visiting Meta’s new central London offices.

When asked by Ms Buchanan why she feels that reading is so important for children, Camilla said: “The earlier you can learn, the better.

“I think that’s very much a parent’s job, to get children reading very young by reading to them, because however young you are, you absorb stories.

“The more stories you absorb, the more interested you’re going to be in the future.

“I think for everybody, to read a story can take you into so many different worlds.

“You can go to places you thought you’d never get to.

“However difficult things are, you can get away from them and go into your own world for a bit.

“I think it’s the most therapeutic thing you can do.

“After lockdown, especially, when we were all in a world we didn’t understand.

“What better than to reach for a book?

“So many people have started reading again which is really good news.”

Camilla said her desert island book would be The Cazalet Chronicles because the series is “so beautifully written” by Elizabeth Jane Howard who she described as “a very underestimated writer”.

The duchess explained: “I can read them time and time again, I’ve listened to them on audiobook, I’ve read them I don’t know how many times.

“The saddest thing ever, I wrote her a fan letter when I finished the fifth, I said ‘oh I can’t wait for another one’.

“She wrote back to me and said’ I’m in the middle of writing another one’, and then she died.

“It was the saddest thing.

“You’re slightly left hanging, she never really completed them.

“Sometimes I wonder if another author will come in and finish them off.”

Camilla added that she has “a huge pile of books” on her to-read list, including City Of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, which she has almost finished, The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, and George III by Andrew Roberts.

The duchess added that her favourite uplifting reads are books by Molly Keane.

Ms Buchanan also quizzed Camilla on which literary characters her dream dinner party guests would be.

The duchess revealed that she would choose “quite an extraordinary mixture” comprising the Count of Monte Cristo, Mrs Danvers and Count Fosco from The Woman In White, who she described as “two rather devious characters to spice up the whole thing”.

“I think they’d cause quite a lot of trouble and I wanted somebody a bit different,” she said.

The duchess added she would also invite her personal heroines Elizabeth Bennett, “a good strong woman to keep the show on the road”, and Uncle Matthew from The Pursuit Of Love “with his entrenching tool to keep everyone under control”.

The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room, an online literary hub, was launched in January 2021, inspired by the success of the duchess’s reading lists shared during the pandemic in 2020.

Camilla shares her love of reading through her Instagram account, and has been praised by leading author Sir Philip Pullman for championing literature.