Princess Beatrice has been tipped for a royal promotion after a charity boss spoke out about the Princess of York supporting the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity.
The 37-year-old became patron of the charity in 2013, a move welcomed by its former CEO Andy Cook.
He recalled: “She became our patron in 2013, which for us was brilliant. Largely because she was so, so high profile, but also because she felt her dyslexia so strongly that she knows so much about it, and she knew about us already as a charity. She’d received a bit of help for her dyslexia, so she wasn’t just here as a figurehead; she really wanted to get involved and stuck in.”
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‘She wears her heart on her sleeve!’ Princess Beatrice tipped for royal promotion as charity boss speaks out
|HELEN ARKELL
One memorable example of this came during a 2019 visit to the charity’s centre. At the time, founder Helen Arkell, then 99, was too unwell to attend.
“After doing a visit to our centre, where she was absolutely brilliant, talking to a whole load of dyslexic children that we’ve got in, Princess Beatrice said, ‘Right, well, let’s pop up to Helen’s bungalow, if she can’t come to us, we’ll go there’,” Cook said.
“She had a present for her, and she’d brought a cake, so I jumped in the back of the car with Princess Beatrice and her security person, and we went to Helen’s home.
"We sat there, and thankfully Helen was well enough to have got out of bed and sit in a chair with her shawl over her, and had a cup of tea and a piece of cake with a Princess in completely just a normal old person’s bungalow.”
Princess Beatrice hosted a tea party at St James' Palace last year for the charity
|HELEN ARKELL
Cook praised Beatrice’s mission to inspire others, continuing to tell the Express: “She’s really on a mission to inspire people to see that dyslexia can be positive. It might not always feel like that, but it can be when you get the help that you can get.
“She helped us with putting out appeals during Covid to say we’re still open, and when we were needing funds, when we couldn’t run any fundraising events, she put out a piece to camera for us to use asking for donations.
“There’s just loads that she does for us, and we always feel that she’s got time for us… It feels like she wears her heart on her sleeve and really throws herself into being a patron of the charity – which is amazing.”
Identified as dyslexic at the age of seven, Beatrice has spoken of feeling “a little muddled” and “the odd one out” at school.
Beatrice has spoken about overcoming her dyslexia
|GETTY
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Princess Beatrice at the Lincoln Centre for the World Dyslexia Assembly (WDA) in New York in 2023 | PASpeaking in 2021, she said: “If by sharing my story I can help one young person, whether they’re 11 or seven, just receiving the news that they’ve got the gift of dyslexia, then I think you’ve got such a fantastic opportunity to share some of these great learnings.
“Honestly, what inspired me to talk about dyslexia the way that I have is because I really want to change the narrative around the diagnosis.
"Even referring to it as a diagnosis, I feel, does a disservice to the brilliance of some of the most fantastic minds that we have.
"And I think just shifting the narrative a little bit towards something that is positive, that is impactful, I think can really help everyone.”