Queen Camilla has spoken for the first time about how she was “so angry” when she was physically assaulted on a train as a teenager.
Camilla described the incident in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, during which she also praised the courage of the racing commentator John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family were murdered at their home.
She said she had “sort of forgotten” about the experience, but the memory had lurked for a long time. “Somebody I didn’t know … I was reading my book, and you know, this boy, man, attacked me, and I did fight back,” she told the programme.
“And I remember getting off the train and my mother looking at me and saying: ‘Why is your hair standing on end?’ and ‘Why is the button missing from your coat?’ But I remember anger, and I was so furious about it, and it’s sort of lurked for many years.
“And I think, you know, when all the subject about domestic abuse came up, and suddenly you hear a story like John and Amy’s, it’s something that I feel very strongly about.”
Queen Camilla (centre) with (left to right) Amy Hunt, John Hunt, Theresa May and Emma Barnett in the Garden Room of Clarence House, London Photograph: Neil Paton/Buckingham Palace/PA
Louise Hunt, 25, her sister Hannah Hunt, 28, and their mother, Carol Hunt, 61, were killed by Kyle Clifford, 27 – Louise’s ex-partner – in a quiet cul-de-sac in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July last year.
In the interview for the programme, guest-edited by the former prime minister Theresa May, Camilla said: “I’d just like to say, wherever your family is now, they’d be so proud of you both. And they must be from above smiling down on you and thinking, my goodness me, what a wonderful, wonderful father, husband, sister.”
Interviewed by Emma Barnett, Hunt said he and his daughter “have travelled such a long way since 9 July 2024, the day the girls were murdered” and wanted to highlight the issue of domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.
Hunt said that, more than one year on, “it remains very difficult on a minute-by-minute basis. You have to try and find the strength in our position to arm yourself with as many tools as possible that can help you get through that next hour, get through that next day. We’ve been blessed with sufficient brain power to work our way through that quagmire and we have found solutions that have got us this far.
“I’m staggered that we are as well as we are at this particular moment in time. There’s still a lot more work to do.”
With the support of Amy, her fiance and Hannah’s boyfriend, he said, “you gain wisdom and confidence that, all right it’s not the future you wanted, but there is a small fragment of future that exists still for you”.
Amy, 32, said what had become obvious was “domestic violence and domestic abuse stretches across classes, ages, locations”. She added: “There’s a huge part of us that’s still in disbelief in shock. Perhaps we will be in that state for the rest of our lives given the magnitude of our loss.”
Though they missed them “every single minute of the day” they were sustained by the “care, the joy, the positivity and the humour” her sisters and mothers had given to the world.
Misogyny and the radicalisation of young men online was a huge problem, she said, which “largely goes unchecked” with tech companies allowing it “to run rampant” on social media. Her father said having “this very dark world open up to me in the starkest possible fashion has been jarring. It’s something I’ve had to navigate very quickly and I’ve had to educate myself as well.”
His wife and daughters were murdered by Clifford after Louise ended her relationship with him. The family had been at pains to be welcoming to Clifford during the 18-month relationship, he said. “When things turn so disastrously against you … and I’m still wrestling with it now … it’s such a demanding thing to try and work out how on earth we ever got here.”
The queen praised their courage in speaking out “in these very difficult circumstances”. Talking could be “cathartic”, she said. “The more you can talk about it the more you can try and get rid of these terrible demons and terrible memory of what happened to you.”
Of her own work highlighting domestic violence, she said the “majority of people actually don’t want to know. It’s been a taboo subject for so long.”
She added: “I thought if I’ve got a tiny soap box to stand on I’d like to stand on it.” Some perpetrators may have suffered abuse themselves, she said. “If you can get them early enough and teach the respect for women, I think that’s so important to get into schools.”
Lady May said it was a “sad fact” that a young boy going online, say for health or fitness, “it’s not that many clicks away before you’re taken to some really dark and dangerous material” and that algorithms ensured “you start living in an echo chamber”. She added: “You can legislate as much as you like, but at the end of the day it’s about attitudes and it’s about mindsets.”
A fundraising gala was held this month to launch the Hunt Family Fund, set up in memory of Carol, Louise and Hannah to raise money for charities and causes that help and inspire young women.