Queen Camilla Returns to Royal Duty Following Summer Break at Balmoral

Queen Camilla returned to her royal duties following a brief summer break at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

The Queen, 78, visited several of her royal patronages in Cornwall, on the southwest tip of England, meeting with locals and checking in with various charities.

She visited the Cornwall Air Ambulance Trust’s Headquarters — which she opened during a royal visit in 2012 — to commemorate the charity’s new operations unit and formally name a new rescue helicopter “The Duke of Cornwall.” Camilla’s husband, King Charles, was the Duke of Cornwall from 1952 until 2022, when he acceded to the throne. The title then passed to his son, Prince William.

During her visit to Cornwall, the Queen also sat down with a local knitting club, which is one of many community projects supported by the Cornwall Community Foundation, of which she is also a patron.

She also visited the headquarters of ShelterBox, a charity that provides emergency shelters to communities that have been ravaged by natural disasters or forced to flee their homes due to violence and war.

The outing marks Queen Camilla’s first outing since spending time at the royal family’s Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands, their annual summer getaway.

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Balmoral has been the royal family’s summer escape since the reign of Queen Victoria, whose husband, Prince Albert, purchased the property in 1852. 

The Queen’s return to royal duties comes as a new book has detailed a previously unknown anecdote about her being the alleged victim of a sexual assault as a teenager.

An excerpt from Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace, published in The Times on Sunday, Aug. 31, details a meeting between Camilla and then-London mayor Boris Johnson in 2008.

At the time, Johnson was planning to open three new rape crisis centers in London, and Low wrote that the future Queen shared a story from her own personal experience.

“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.’ Harri said: ‘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.’ ”

Buckingham Palace declined to comment when reached by PEOPLE.

Queen Camilla has long made supporting victims of rape, domestic violence and sexual abuse a key priority of her public work. In March, she reached out to Gisèle Pelicot to commend her for her “extraordinary dignity and courage.”

“As a long-term supporter of survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, the Queen wrote to Madame Pelicot privately,” a royal aide told Newsweek. “It was very much her instigation and determination to write to express support from the highest level.”