Queen Camilla’s power is anything but soft

Such are the strides that she is making that when someone namedrops the Queen, it’s no longer automatic that you think of Elizabeth. Queen Camilla yesterday became the first royal woman to join the Garrick Club since it opened its list to women in 2024, and in doing so continued the subtle campaign of change that she has been undertaking for years.My Garrick mole tells me that, as Charles used to be a regular user of the private dining rooms, Camilla would have had an in that way. But her membership is about more than getting a spot of supper when the King is elsewhere.This sort of thing matters more than you might think. By all means, men should spend time together – please do! – but there is no longer a need to “get away from the wife” as it feels like so many of these clubs originated to do. The transactional marriage is dead to all but billionaires. I grew up with men and women taught on an equal footing. We’ve come a long way. That said, with all the best will in the world, chaps still have the upper hand by a country mile. You only have to look at how FTSE CEOs named Andrew or John outnumber all their female counterparts. Socialising at clubs like the Garrick is another place where deals can be made, and women, if they want to be, should be in on that too. Not least because any remaining thoughts of women being lesser should be stamped out.But the Queen’s membership is another example of the soft power she has wielded to great effect since well before she joined the Windsor household. It’s vital to social change and wider diplomacy. Royal wives, to use a revolting collective noun, have traditionally had to do soft power by stealth. It’s amazing what you can do when armed with a good stylist, a blow-dry and a great smile – you can please Sidebar of Shame readers with a photo and get a message across at the same time.Camilla, who came of age in the fast-paced, heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking hunting set, has lived. She’s been brilliant at working with charities and causes that have personal meaning – her mother and grandmother both died from osteoporosis-related causes, and she has worked tirelessly on advancing understanding of the condition since the 90s, including appearing on The Archers and a tie-up with Strictly Come Dancing.But through the unwavering confidence and unwavering sense of self that probably comes from not having been hot-housed with the royals since youth, she ha been steadily advancing causes that royals by birth – the peerless Anne aside – may have swerved as too tricky. From her call to arms to British men after the murder of Sarah Everard, to candidly disclosing her own sexual assault to Radio 4’s Today last year, she is proving that light is the best disinfectant for stigma, just as Harry and William have done with mental health. It was back in 2013 that she brought Keir Starmer, then director of public prosecutions, and the home secretary, Theresa May, together with rape victims in the first meeting of high-profile figures to focus exclusively on the discussion of rape and sexual abuse. With gentle yet unrelenting firmness, Camilla is making it very clear that the very British habit of brushing subjects under the carpet as “not nice”, or dismissing certain attitudes as belonging to a certain class, generation or upbringing, cannot wash any longer. At 78, an aristocrat by birth and royal by marriage, the Queen is the epitome of the establishment, which makes her unstinting support for the arts, literacy and ending violence against women and girls so incredibly meaningful. Her membership at the Garrick may be symbolic above everything, but only because she’ll probably be too busy to attend.Thus it was incredibly shrewd of Clarence House to invite the wildly successful authors Jeffrey Archer, Richard Osman, Robert Harris, Lee Child and Jojo Moyes to her inaugural Queen’s Reading Room Medal reception on Wednesday. It was a reminder that writers put millions into the British economy – a sop to the business-minded – while people working at a grassroots level are rewarded.The soft power the arts provide to Britain is vital: thank goodness that, in the face of so many cuts, the government is to increase funding to the BBC World Service by an additional £11m a year for the next three years. Literacy is vital for building independence, social understanding, combating disinformation and building empathy. Camilla’s support for it, and for encouraging reading for pleasure and not just for purely educational purposes, is admirable.Elizabeth II made a virtue of judicious silence through her long reign. Now Charles must embody that general, robust discretion. But Camilla can quietly and persistently effect meaningful change through the change in social attitudes both as his Queen, and as ours.