‘Alice in Wonderland’ scared me, admits Queen Camilla

THE QUEEN has admitted she was never a fan of author Lewis Carroll because Alice in Wonderland frightened her as a child.

When Her Majesty, 76, was asked on her podcast, the Reading Room, to choose between Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen, there was no hesitation.

“Hans Christian Andersen,” she replied. “I have to admit I’ve never really liked Lewis Carroll. I was rather put off by Alice going down that rabbit hole. It always really frightened me as a child.”

The Queen does not appear to have let her own views cloud those of others.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of many books featured on her website, as recommended by authors William Boyd, Elif Shafak and Susan Hill. The actor Richard E Grant read Carroll’s All

in the Golden Afternoon, the preface poem to Alice in Wonderland, at the inaugural Queen’s Reading Room Literary Festival at Hampton Court Palace last June.

Grant said Alice in Wonderland “has been my favourite book since I was seven and I’ve read it every year religiously ever since”.

At a poetry recital attended by the Queen at a primary school in west London last August, two students performed Carroll’s Jabberwocky dressed as the Mad Hatter and Alice.

The Queen’s views may well have prompted a debate with the Princess of Wales.

In her final year reading history of art at university, the Princess wrote her dissertation about Carroll’s photographs of children. She wrote to the Lewis Carroll Society in November 2004, asking if it could recommend anyone who might help her.

“I am interested in looking at Carroll’s representations of ‘the child’ and whether his photographs support or conflict our notions of childhood,” she wrote.

She was duly sent a list of books that might aid her research, revealing that she had read “in depth” two of the publications and would “certainly” look at the others.

At her 40th birthday portrait shoot in January 2022, the Princess discussed her passion for photography with Paolo Roversi, an Italian photographer.

In 2018, it was claimed that the Duke of Sussex had considered buying a £24,000 first edition of Carroll’s

Through the Looking Glass, as a christening present for his nephew, Prince Louis, but eventually plumped for a 1926 first edition of A A Milne’s Winnie

the Pooh, for £8,000.