The Queen's Reading Room heads to Chatsworth for 2025 festival

Her Majesty Queen Camilla’s charity, The Queen’s Reading Room, has announced the return of its highly anticipated flagship event The Queen’s Reading Room Festival, which boasts a world-famous line-up and brand new venue for its 2025 event.

The charity, launched by The Queen in 2023, works in the UK and beyond to celebrate and promote the transformative power of books. Its groundbreaking neuroscience examines the connection between regular reading and improved wellbeing, while its events have reached more than 20,000 people in the past two years alone. The charity reaches more than 12 million people in 174 countries.

The star-studded literary line-up at this year’s Queen’s Reading Room Festival will see Lorraine Kelly interview Rivals author Jilly Cooper, whilst Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding and Me Before You author Jojo Moyes will discuss the process of writing stories full of love and hope. Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton series, will take part in a special Bridgerton discussion panel. Legendary actor Celia Imrie will also join the line-up to interview Thursday M**der Club author and comedian Richard Osman, whilst journalist Reeta Chakrabarti will interview Assembly author Natasha Brown.

Samantha Shannon, Sarah Winman, Joanna Cannon, Kristin Hannah, Peter James, Rupert Everett, Robert Harris, Peter Frankopan, Sebastian Faulks, Lady Anne Glenconner, Gyles Brandreth, Sarah Waters and Alan Titchmarsh have also been confirmed to take to the Festival stage as part of a suite of world-class literary programming.

The Festival, which sold nearly 20,000 tickets in its first two year tenure at Hampton Court Palace, will this September move to the magical setting of Chatsworth in Derbyshire, the famous backdrop for the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, released twenty years ago almost to the day.

In 2023 and 2024, The Queen’s Reading Room Festival attracted audiences from as far away as The United States and Canada as well as Australia and New Zealand. It is hoped that the move to Chatsworth will offer more audiences across the UK the opportunity to attend, whilst also offering a unique historic experience for overseas visitors.

To mark the 250th anniversary of novelist Jane Austen, the festival will open with a special screening of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the Chatsworth Garden. Over the course of the weekend, visitors will also be able to immerse themselves in Austen’s life and legacy at a pop-up exhibition of Austen artefacts, curated especially for The Queen’s Reading Room by Jane Austen’s House, before rounding off their weekend with a showing of ‘Sense and Sensibility’, also in the garden, on Saturday afternoon. As in 2023 and 2024, visitors to this year’s festival will once again enjoy author book signings.

Tickets go on sale at 10am on 14 May.

To book, please visit https://www.chatsworth.org/tqrr-festival

Also check out other Arts events in Bakewell, Festivals in Bakewell, Literary Art events in Bakewell.