Austen skit tops bill at Camilla book day

THE Queen has inspired a Jane Austen parody to be performed at her inaugural literary festival.

Comedy group Austentatious will don period costume to improvise a play based on a fictional Austen title dreamt up by Camilla as a centrepiece of the Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Hampton Court Palace next month.

Organisers promise the event will be ‘a literary festival like no other’ – and will break from the stuffy convention of ‘authors plugging their own books’. The Queen has been ‘hands on’ in organising the day-long extravaganza on June 11.

The festival will also honour the life and work of Wolf Hall novelist Dame Hilary Mantel, despite the late author’s controversial relationship with the Royal Family.

In a 2013 speech, described by critics as ‘venomous’, Dame Hilary referred to the Princess of Wales, then the Duchess of Cambridge, as having been ‘designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindle of her limbs handturned and gloss-varnished’.

Dame Hilary’s ‘life and legacy’ will be celebrated in a special event with actors Ben Miles and Dame Harriet Walter and the authors Philippa Gregory and Kamila Shamsie

It is hoped the festival will become one of Camilla’s ‘legacy’ projects by inspiring more people to take up reading.

Vikki Perrin, chief executive of the Queen’s Reading Room, said: ‘The Queen is so passionate about books and sharing reading recommendations’, adding that whenever she went to see her she would be ‘sitting in an armchair literally surrounded by books.

‘We hope that this is the start of something really special that will grow, rather than just a one-off.’

Also taking part is one of the King’s favourite writers, Robert Harris.

The Queen launched The Reading Room, which recommends four books four times a year, on Instagram in January 2021.