Duchess of Cornwall will attend the Women of the Year Lunch

The Duchess of Cornwall will attend The Women of the Year Lunch & Awards this year.

The lunch will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel, Park Lane, London on the 16 October. She will be joined at the lunch by 450 women who have all been nominated as Women of the Year for their own highly individual reasons.

At the meal, all the ladies are considered equal, and so it will be no surprise to find farmers sitting with financiers, or actors with community workers, each person is there because of their own individual story, and these women can come from anywhere across the globe. Awards are presented to exceptional women who have each proved an inspiration to others through their courage, selflessness and dedication both in the UK and globally.

The Women of the Year awards were founded in 1955 by Antonia Lothian who had grown up in war-torn Italy, and later married Peter Kerr, 12th Marquis of Lothian in 1943. She saw through the circles her husband moved in the benefits that could be gained when men met in pleasant surroundings and ironed out differences. She also felt that such a situation would also benefit women if they too could have a such a meeting. Despite being told by both sexes she could never find five hundred famous women – career women, she set out to prove them all wrong. She was helped by her two friends Lady Georgina Coleridge and Odette Fellows, a former English spy tortured by the Germans. The fact that the lunches continue to this day prove the legacy of Tony Lothian continues and flourishes.

The attendance of the Duchess at this event, fits in very well with another of her roles, as in 2015 she was President of the Women of the World Festival which also celebrates the achievements of women and girls together with acknowledging the obstacles they must overcome.