Queen Camilla has long campaigned on violence against women, good for her. She has spoken publicly for the first time about being attacked by a man while reading a book on a train when she was a young woman.

Coincidentally, I was once attacked by a group of men while reading a book on the Tube when I was a young woman.

To be honest, I think the most important message to relay to other females about both of these assaults is this: always be aware of your surroundings and who is in your space when you are travelling alone or in a potentially vulnerable situation.

Don’t lose focus or purpose. Don’t let your guard slip. Stay alert instead of becoming engrossed in what Rupert Campbell-Black did to Taggie O’Hara on the freshly mown hay in Jilly Cooper-land.

It’s not victim blaming, it is just a sensible precaution in an increasingly dangerous world.

Perhaps the Queen should have said more about preventative personal safety, instead of reliving the time she whacked the man in the groin with her shoe, fighting him off with an admirable bit of posh girl grit.

And I also thought Camilla was rather, shall we say... bold to bring up this incident as an example of male violence in front of John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family members were slaughtered by a psychopath.

On a summer afternoon in 2024, Kyle Clifford fatally stabbed 61-year-old Carol Hunt; raped his former partner, Louise Hunt, 25; then used a crossbow to shoot both her and her sister Hannah, 28 – all at their family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire.

Queen Camilla has spoken publicly for the first time about being attacked by a man while reading a book on a train when she was a young woman

Tragically, there was no fighting off this maniac with a plucky slingback. Even now it is hard to imagine a more harrowing ordeal for both the victims and survivors of this poor, luckless family.

It is not to belittle Camilla’s experience – no doubt frightening at the time – to suggest that her tussle on a train cannot begin to compare with the violence unleashed in this triple murder, in which some of the victims undoubtedly watched some of the others die.

Camilla said she had ‘sort of forgotten’ what had happened to her, but that the courage of the Hunt family had prompted her to speak about her experience. My attack happened late one evening on a Northern Line train. When busy reading, I failed to notice that my carriage had emptied – and then become occupied by three youths, one armed with a knife.

They tried to steal my handbag and then haul me off the train. God knows how I managed to fight them off, but I did.

I remembered my policeman father telling me that if I was ever attacked, I might not have the time or the opportunity to fight back but, whatever happened, to ‘make as much bloody noise as bloody possible’.