Queen Camilla has congratulated a group of young writers for their talents as she revealed the champions of the BBC’s 500 Words competition. Although the contest was suspended for three years, 44,000 submissions were sent this year, with winners announced on World Book Day’s The One Show. Entrants were divided into two age groups – five to seven-year-olds and eight to 11-year-olds – with the Queen giving gold, silver, and bronze medals to the winners.
In her speech, the English monarch praised the young authors for their talent, saying that it was “a massive pleasure” to have the competition back. “In the three years that we have been without this wonderful competition, I believe we have realised how much we have missed it,” she said, adding, “Each one of you is a brilliant writer, with the power to conjure magic with your pens and lead us on escapades with your keyboards.”
During the celebration, the finalists had their compositions read in the Buckingham Palace ballroom by well-known personalities such as Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, and Hugh Bonneville. Since the contest’s inception, half a billion words have “been typed typed, scribbled, and tumbled onto thousands of pages by children across the UK,” according to Queen Camilla, and have been curated by volunteers and sent to Oxford University Press to form the most massive collection of children’s writing in the world.
Queen Camilla has been committed to promoting writing among young people since 2015 and supports numerous literary organizations. Chris Evans launched the competition on the breakfast show of BBC Radio 2 in 2011, and it continued across the UK until 2020 with his successor Zoe Ball
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