Tireless Camilla! When it comes to promoting literature, the wife of Charles III, although still tired from pneumonia which forced her to cancel various commitments, does not count her time. This is the case on Wednesday, December 4 at the residence of the French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Her Excellency Hélène Duchêne, where she is invited by Brigitte Macron, who arrived the day before from Paris, to present the first prize of the literary understanding. A reward whose creation was announced at the National Library of France in September 2023, on the occasion of the state visit of the British royal couple.
Both passionate readers, the two women meet with joy and obvious complicity, and do not fail to offer each other… books! In keeping with current events, Brigitte Macron came with in her luggage the beautiful book devoted to the restoration of Notre-Dame, which had just been published by Tallandier, while the queen, for her part, selected four novels including the Korean saga Pachinko and the latest book by American novelist Ann Patchett, published in France by Actes Sud. Together, they then find “their” Franco-British jury, made up of five authors and chaired by the novelist Joanna Harris, herself born of an English father and a French mother. There we find the novelist Timothée de Fombelle, to whom we owe the Tobie Lollness and Alma sagas, acclaimed by young French readers, or even Marie-Aude Murail, creator of the Sauveur & Fils series.
“It was fascinating work fueled by passionate but always cordial deliberations,” emphasizes Joanna Harris, who has already met Queen Camilla several times as part of her book club. We are very lucky to have two personalities so invested in the defense of reading among young people, and we were able to crown some very beautiful works which deal with crucial themes such as theft or romantic friendship.” This is indeed the case with Voleuses, ou Thieves, the award-winning graphic novel by Lucie Bryon, who herself translated it. The other distinguished novel, the Blue Book of Nebo, “presents courage and tenderness as the only ways to survive when the world is going badly”, rejoices Timothée de Fombelle. Its author Manon Stefan Ross and her translator Lise Garrond were also warmly congratulated by the Queen and the First Lady, attentive to the readings of extracts in French and English provided in their presence by students from the Winston Churchill school.
The two prizes of 8,000 euros, which reward both authors and translators, are intended to be awarded each year in order to bring the cultures of the two countries closer together and to encourage reading among young people. A particularly important step for the first lady, as she recalled the day before at the French Lycée Charles de Gaulle in London, which she visited to learn about the measures put in place to combat harassment. She carries this fight both as first lady and with the Hospital Foundation. “Madame Macron and the Queen are both avid readers, confirms Vicki Perrin, who runs “The Queen’s reading room”, the reading club launched by the Queen in January 2021. The Queen reads absolutely everything, detective novels, classics, essays or biographies, the king too, even if he is more interested in non-fiction works. And he is passionate about theater. It is a great opportunity for the country. to have sovereigns so committed to the promotion of the arts in general and literature in particular.”
It is not the author of detective novels Peter James, warmly greeted by the queen for many minutes, who will say the opposite: his recurring detective Roy Grace, hero of 21 books and a television adaptation, Gracebroadcast in France on 13e rue, is the favorite of his Majesty who has just told him that he finished his latest adventure published the day before! “Queen Camilla is a loyal and passionate reader, she is my first fan,” he confides with pride. Her mother-in-law, the late Queen Elizabeth II, was too, but she once told me that she was too busy with the famous red boxes to really have time to read. When she did, she loved delving into classic authors like Kipling. On the other hand, she loved watching Grace, the television series based on my books. Counting two queens among your first fans, what more could you dream of?
