How Camilla’s helping the Mail make history!
Swordfights and Samurai. Russian espionage. Tudor romance and royal stories galore. With the Duchess set to open Chalke Valley History Festival on Monday...
WHERE better to see a spot of royal history being made than at the world’s largest history festival? Although there have been occasional royal visits over the years to some of B ritain’s great summer festivals, royalty has never actually been part of the line-up — until now.
on M onday, t he D uchess o f C ornwall w ill not only open the 2022 Daily Mail Chalke Valley H istory F estival, s he w ill k ick o ff t he first event — a discussion entitled ‘Rediscovering women in history’ with the best-selling historical novelist Philippa Gregory and the historian Alison Weir.
At the end, the Duchess will switch to interviewer mode, chipping in with q uestions submitted via her online book club, The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room. I n d ue c ourse, t he e vent, s ponsored by the Rothermere Foundation, will be uploaded to the Reading Room website
which i s n ow s omething o f a v irtual l iterary festival in its own right.
originally conceived as a lockdown a ntidote in the early days of the Covid
p andemic, the Reading Room has b allooned into a literary hub with a sixfigure following on Instagram.
As well as regular discussions on a series of books — all of them hand-picked by the Duchess — it includes interviews with authors, readings by actors, booklists for children and much else.
It c onsolidates t he D uchess’s i ncreasingly high-profile role as the royal champion of allthingsliterary.HerhusbandPrinceCharles (along with her son-in-law, the Duke of Cambridge) might be best known for his deep-rooted devotion to the e nvironment.
However, to an ever greater extent, the Duchessistobefoundsupportinganyendeavour which encourages anyone of any age to open a book.
Just this week, she launched the C ommonwealth Poetry Podcast with GylesandAphraBrandrethandDameJoanna Lumley (discussing some of HRH’sfavourites, including Rudyard Kipling’s A Smuggler’s Song).
A few days fromnow, s he w ill b e a ccompanying the Prince of Wales to the Commonwealthsummit inRwanda where she will be championing the work of one of her charities, Book AidI nternational, in delivering e ssential b ooks t o the developing world.
FoR m any y ears, she has supervised theworld’s oldest writing competition for c hildren, The Queen’s
Commonwealth Essay Competition. At theother e nd o f t he s pectrum, she has been inside prisons promoting wider access to books via her National Literacy Trust.
Books and history, in other words, are now central to the working life of the future Queen. ‘She’sagenuinechampion.Shefinds reading a great companion andshewantsotherstodothesame,’ says Gyles Brandreth.
‘People sometimes ask how she can have read so many books, but she is one of the most well-read
people I have met,’ says Vicki P errin, director of the Duchess’s Reading Room.
‘You find piles of books all round Clarence House. The place is packed with them, from commercial thrillers to award winners to children’s favourites.’
Miss P errin f irst m et t he D uchess when she was co-ordinating BBC
Radio 2’s hugely successful 500 Words story competition.
‘We would whittle it down to a s hortlist o f 5 0 a nd s he w ould m ake
notes o n e very s ingle o ne o f t hem,’ she recalls.
There will certainly be plenty to discuss throughout the week-long Chalke Valley History Festival, the biggest event of its kind in the world. Across seven days, the festival w ill d raw t ens o f t housands to the stunning 70-acre site in the
heart of Thomas Hardy country, on the Wiltshire/Dorset border near Salisbury.
The programme is aimed at e veryone from schoolchildren and families to students of the most pressing current affairs.
Whether swordfights andS amurai are your thing, or whether y ou a re m ore i nterested in Russian espionage or Tudor romance or the home life of the Churchill family, history is always m ore e xciting t han w hen you are living through it.
Some of the most popular tickets are for events touching on the c urrent E ast/West c risis. T hese include a talk by Bill Browder, indefatigable campaigner against the c orruption o f t he P utin r egime in Russia (the infamous Moscowsanctioned Salisbury poisonings are certainly not forgotten in these parts).
Similarly, Helena Merriman’s tale of a desperate attempt to escape Soviet oppression by t unnelling b eneath t he B erlin W all is a sell-out.
There w ill b e f irst-hand a ccounts, too, from the frontline in Ukraine and a lso a nalysis o f t he c ollapse o f UK-Russianrelationsbyformerforeign secretary Lord owen. Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong, its lastgovernorLordPattenlooksboth forward and back.
They are just a handful of more than600eventsandattractions
which stretch as far back as the Iron Age (complete with
rebuilt Iron A ge h ouse) v ia l essons in ancient Roman cooking and
‘sword s chool’ f or w ould-be k nights in shining armour.
‘This is our biggest and best yet. The rush for tickets is testament tojusthowexcitedpeoplearetobebackateventslikethis,’
says festival director JanePleydell-Bouverie.
In recent years, a very popular section o f t he C halke V alley H istory Festival has been a trench from a particular p eriod i n B ritish m ilitary history. This year, visitors can sign up to experience conditions in a British Army trench in 1940 at C assel, i n B elgium, w here t he m en of the Gloucesters and the ox & Bucks dug in to give the British Expeditionary Force a fighting chance of reaching Dunkirk and a route home.
DURING weekdays, several s ections o f t he festival are aimed squarely at schools, including a day devoted to World War II. This features everything
from live firing of a 25-pounder to fresh a nalysis o f t he G erman d efeat in t he E ast a nd t he A llied c ampaign
from D-Day through to Berlin, withbothveteransandexpertslike the military historianJames Holland.
Another familiar face is the television presenter Dan Jones, who will be discussing ‘all you need to know’ about the War of the Roses.
It is certainly not all about war, however. The programme is packed with events dedicated to social history, music, art and archaeology — plus generous helpings of nostalgia. Former home s ecretary A lan J ohnson a nd
the BBC presenter Justin Webb will discuss their best-selling accounts of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.
Given that this year’s festival will commence with a royal visit,
it seems appropriate that there is plenty of royal subject matter all w eek.
As w ell a s s everal e vents d evoted to the love lives of the Tudors, the historian Andrew Roberts will be discussing h is m ulti-award-winning new biography, George III: The Life And Reign of Britain’s Most M isunderstood Monarch. I must declare an interest since I am d iscussing my own biography of o ur current monarch, Queen of our T imes.
Trumping us all, including even the Duchess of Cornwall, will be one royal speaker who knows what it is like to be a fully fledged monarch. Simeon SaxeCoburg-Gotha, who will bes peaking on the final Sunday, holdstheuniquedistinctionofhaving been both king and d emocratically elected prime m inister of the same country.
As a b oy, h e w as H is M ajesty T sar Simeon II of the Bulgarians for three years before being deposed by the Soviets in 1946. Half a c entury later, he ended up serving as p rime m inister o f B ulgaria f rom 2001 to 2005.
From HM to PM? That’s history for you.
Chalke Valley History Festival, June 20-26. For information, visit cvhf.org.uk