QUEEN IS A SURPRISE GUEST AT HAMPTON COURT PALACE
Her Majesty The Queen was a surprise guest at the Queen’s Reading Room event at Hampton Court Palace last night where she met top writers and actors who made up a star-studded cast for a day of events at the historic venue.
The Queen joined a champagne reception and met best-selling authors Lee Child, Sir Ian Rankin and Ann Cleeves as well as actors Helena Bonham Carter, Patricia Hodge, Rachel Sterling, Miriam Margolyes.
It was the second year running the event had been held at the Palace and over 10.000 people attended the various events during the day.
Her Majesty sat in the front row of a covered pavilion in the main open area of the Palace next to her son Tom Parker Bowles and her sister as her close friend Gyles Brandreth hosted a show called ‘What the Dickens!’ in which experts talked about Charles Dickens and the actors read excerpts from his works including Oliver Twist.
Earlier in the day The Queen’s Reading Room Chief Executive, Vicky Perrin hosted a Q and A with crime writers Lee Child, who writes the Jack Reacher books, Ian Rankin who writes the Rebus and Ann Cleeves who created Shetland and Vera .
The first event of the day was a performance from the cast of the West End hit Operation Mincemeat based upon a book of the same name by spy writer Ben Macintyre as well as a Q and A with the team of writers.
The Queen’s Reading Room is the charity working to celebrate and promote the power and benefits of reading and is on a mission to help more people find and connect with books which enrich their lives.
You can read more about the charity here: https://thequeensreadingroom.co.uk/about/
