On Saturday, Queen Camilla attended a special literary event at Cliveden House—and sparked a real-life mystery when one of her pearls went missing!
Queen Camilla arrived at Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire on Saturday to attend the opening of the 2025 Cliveden Literary Festival. Established in 2017, the festival has been described by the author Ian McEwan as “probably the world’s best small literary festival.”
Wearing a green dress with a leopard-print chiffon blouse, Queen Camilla delivered remarks at the start of the weekend. The long list of notable speakers at this year’s festival included royal historians and biographers like Simon Sebag Montefiore, Andrew Roberts, Robert Hardman, Helen Castor, Tina Brown, and Anne Sebba, as well as the jewelry historian Carol Woolton and V&A director Tristram Hunt.
For the festival opening, Queen Camilla wore a pair of gold earrings with interlocking circle pendants, plus a petite brooch in the shape of a coronet.
The brooch has been in Camilla’s collection since her days as Duchess of Cornwall. She memorably wore it for a visit to Yorkshire in February 2018, during which she visited the Bronte parsonage at Haworth. The tiny brooch, which is shown in close-up in that earlier article, is set with diamonds and red and green gemstones, with a line of tiny golden pearls perched on top.
But if you’ll closely compare those earlier pictures of the jewel from 2018 with the images from last week’s appearance at Cliveden House, you’ll spot something peculiar: one of the brooch’s pearls has gone missing! The last pearl on the right side of the piece is no longer sitting where it should be.
It makes me wonder whether the brooch might have caught on the cape-style jacket that Camilla wore on her arrival to the festival, perhaps slightly damaging the jewel and tearing away the tiny pearl. If so, I hope it was found before it got away!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.