As Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, approaches her 75th birthday on July 17, she is undertaking a blitz of appearances in Wales with Prince Charles, including visiting an elementary school to open a new library on Wednesday. According to People, she complimented a young girl on her “very royal wave” and also received a cake and an early birthday gift from the students.
To mark her big day, Camilla is also launching a few big projects. She used her visit to the elementary school to launch the Duchess’s Birthday Books Project, which will give “mini libraries” to 25,000 children at 75 elementary schools in underserved neighborhoods, according to her patronage, the Literacy Trust.
She’s also using the occasion to open up. On Tuesday, she announced that she has guest-edited an issue of Country Life, the publication that Prince Charles and Princess Anne have also used to celebrate their own milestone birthdays. For a cover portrait, she asked daughter-in-law Kate Middleton to step behind the camera, and the resulting image shows Camilla in a blue floral dress in the garden at Ray Mill, the country home she owns personally. She also participated in a documentary, Camilla’s Country Life, following her as she works with the team at the popular British magazine.
In a preview for the documentary, which will air on July 13, she said that she wrote an essay about her husband after choosing him as one of her “countryside heroes” in the issue. “It’s not easy to write about your husband,” she said. “I bit through several pencils.” She is also joined by her sister Annabel Elliot for a visit to Hall Place, their childhood home in East Sussex.
In an interview with British Vogue last month, she said that any private birthday party would be low-key. “There won’t be much celebration,” she says. “I shall spend it with my family and a few friends.” She said that she would turn down her grandchildren’s pressure to pierce her ears. They aren’t pierced now, “And they are not going to be!” she told the magazine. “No, I’m not going to give it to myself for a 75th birthday present. [The grandchildren] will try to persuade me, but nothing’s going to pierce my ears.”
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