Queen Camilla fought off a man who sexually assaulted her on a train when she was a teenager by hitting him with her shoe, a new book has revealed. The attack occurred when she was 16 or 17 years old while travelling to London's Paddington station in the early 1960s.
The incident has been detailed in a new book about the monarchy titled "Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street" by Valentine Low, a former royal reporter for The Times. Buckingham Palace did not approve the book's publication, though the Queen took a pragmatic approach to its release.
Details of the teenage attack
According to the book, Camilla told Boris Johnson about the assault during a meeting at Clarence House around 2008. Johnson's former communications director Guto Harri recounted the conversation in extracts published in the Sunday Times.
Camilla explained how the man was "moving his hand further and further" during the train journey. When Johnson asked what she did next, she replied: "I did what my mother taught me to. I took off my shoe and whacked him in the nuts with the heel."
The future Queen showed remarkable composure after the attack. "She was self-possessed enough when they arrived at Paddington to jump off the train, find a guy in uniform and say, 'That man just attacked me', and he was arrested," Harri recalled.
Broader campaign work
The Queen has never spoken publicly about this personal experience, preferring instead to focus on supporting other survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She has visited rape centres both in the UK and abroad, hosted receptions for survivors, and spoken out on these issues for many years.
A source close to the Queen emphasised that this teenage experience was not the primary motivation for her advocacy work. The source explained she has "sought to campaign and highlight their stories rather than put her own experience, unpleasant as it was all those years ago, into the spotlight."
Continuing commitment
In an ITV documentary last year, Camilla vowed she will "keep trying" to end domestic violence until she is "able to no more." The programme followed her work in this field over the course of a year.
The source suggested that if the book's publication leads to wider discussion of these issues, it could "de-stigmatise the whole topic and empowers girls today to take action and seek help, and to talk about it." Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the revelations.
Sources used: "PA Media" Note: This article has been edited with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
