The Queen fought off an attacker who groped her on a train when just a teenager by hitting him in “the nuts,” a new book has revealed.
Camilla did “what my mother taught me” and took off her shoe to fend off the man as she travelled to London’s Paddington station in the early 1960s when aged 16 or 17.
The King’s consort has never spoken publicly about the attack, preferring to focus on survivors of domestic violence and sexual assaults she has supported for many years, but it has been featured in a new book about the monarchy.
A source close to the Queen said: “If some good comes of this publication, which is that the wider issues are discussed, it de-stigmatises the whole topic and empowers girls today to take action and seek help, and to talk about it, then that’s a good outcome.”
The incident is recounted in the book Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street by Valentine Low, a former royal reporter for The Times newspaper.
It is understood the book was not approved by Buckingham Palace and the Queen took a pragmatic approach to its publication, but did not encourage it.
In Power and the Palace, Boris Johnson’s former communications director Guto Harri recalls Mr Johnson telling him about a meeting with the Queen at her official London home Clarence House around 2008, the year the politician was first elected London Mayor.
In the extract, published in the Sunday Times, Mr Harri said about the pair: “They obviously got on like a house on fire. He (Mr Johnson) was making guttural noises about how much he admired and liked her.”
Mr Harri went on to speak about a conversation between Camilla and Mr Johnson, about an assault that she said occurred when she was a schoolgirl.
“She was on a train going to Paddington – she was about 16, 17 – and some guy was moving his hand further and further…”
Mr Harri said that after Mr Johnson asked what she did next, Camilla had replied: “I did what my mother taught me to. I took off my shoe and whacked him in the nuts with the heel.
“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.”
The Queen has visited rape centres in the UK and abroad, hosted receptions for sexual assault and domestic abuse survivors, and spoken out on the issue, but her experience as a teenager has not been the main driving force of her work, rather the stories of the women who have endured attacks.
In an ITV documentary last year, she vowed she will “keep trying” to end domestic violence, until she is “able to no more”, and was followed over the course of a year for the programme looking at her work in the field.
The source said about the Queen’s experience as a teenager: “It has not been the pure motivation of her work campaigning for sexual and domestic violence.
“Although she had that experience all those years ago, sadly it’s the experience many women went through then and now to a greater magnitude, and they suffer violent physical and emotional harm that endures for very many years.
“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 or to use that as her motivating force.
“She would prefer the discussion to be about others and the support that can be provided for them.”
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
