Research Fellow lunches with the Queen
20th July 2023
Blackfriars Hall’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson, had lunch with the Queen last week as part of a reception for the First Story charity.
Queen Camilla is Patron of First Story, a charity with which Dr Lander Johnson partners to bring 400 secondary school students to Cambridge or Oxford for an annual festival of writing.
Read more about this year’s festival
The event took place at Clarence House, to celebrate the 15th birthday of First Story. Guests had lunch and spoke with the Queen about their work on literature and education.
Dr Lander Johnson said, “I’m so pleased that the King and Queen are supportive of the arts and literacy. At a time when these skills are less valued in British culture, it is important for us to find champions. The Queen was very interested to hear about our work with young people and writing.”
Dr Lander Johnson was a Keynote Speaker at the recent Christian Literary Imagination Conference held jointly by Blackfriars Hall, Campion Hall, and Georgetown University in December 2022. Among her current projects, she is co-editor of the Catholic Women Writers Series at CUA Press, which aims to recover some of the lost women’s voices of the Catholic Literary Revival.
Photo credit: Ian Jones Photography.