Valentine Low’s biography, serialised in The Times, recounts alleged 1960s incident in which the future queen struck a man with her shoe and reported him at Paddington
A new biography of life at the centre of British power claims Queen Camilla fought off a man who tried to grope her on a train to Paddington when she was a teenager in the 1960s.
Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street, serialised in The Times and The Sunday Times, describes the episode. According to the book — and a recollection attributed to Boris Johnson’s then-communications director Guto Harri — the future queen removed her shoe and struck the assailant in the groin with the heel before leaving the train and finding a uniformed officer to report the attack. The book says the man was arrested.
Ms Harri is quoted as saying: “She was on a train going to Paddington — she was about 16, 17 — and some guy was moving his hand further and further … At that point Johnson had asked what happened 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.’” Low’s book reports that Camilla told Mr Johnson about the incident in 2012 when discussions were under way about opening rape crisis centres in London.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the account when contacted. The episode, as presented in Low’s book, is an account rather than an independently verified record.
The biography places the alleged attack in the context of Camilla’s long-standing advocacy for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. As Duchess of Cornwall and now as Queen, she has campaigned for Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) in the UK and abroad, and has hosted gatherings to bring together organisations supporting victims. Sources cited in the book suggest she has often avoided speaking about the alleged train incident publicly so as not to draw attention away from other victims.
Power and the Palace is the latest in a series of recent works examining the royal household and its relationship with government. The book’s serialisation in national papers has already prompted debate about privacy, the public interest and how traumatic experiences involving public figures should be reported.
