Queen Camilla officially opened the 2025 Cliveden Literary Festival on Saturday, according to a statement issued by Buckingham Palace.
The Queen later hosted a reception for writers, festival patrons, charity partners, and students from the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, marking the beginning of the two-day event.
In a speech delivered to guests, the Camilla reflected on Cliveden’s rich literary legacy.
“There are few houses and gardens in England that are quite as steeped in literature as this one,” she said.
“Rudyard Kipling stayed in the early 1900s. JM Barrie enjoyed strolling in the woods. George Bernard Shaw briefly came to escape the Blitz. Henry James and Edith Wharton holidayed here.”
She added that the estate was praised in Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”, inspired Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows”, and even serves “Ian Fleming’s ‘Vesper Martini’ at the bar, a drink that was a favourite of the late, much-missed Dame Jilly Cooper.”
The Vesper Martini, made famous by Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the 1953 novel Casino Royale, was named after the spy’s love interest, Vesper Lynd.