Princess Beatrice issued an apology this week after she was unable to attend a very special event in London. The Princess, who is patron of Oscar’s Book Prize, was expected to attend the charity's awards ceremony on Tuesday, however, she could not make it due to personal reasons.

According to Hello!, the charity's co-founder, James Ashton, took to the stage to announce that the princess had sent her apologies for not attending. He said: "You may have noticed that she added to her family recently."

Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York's eldest daughter welcomed her second daughter, Athena Mapelli Mozzi, last January with husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

During this year's ceremony, Yorkshire-based author and illustrator Polly Noakes was awarded £10,000 for her work for her "touching story of friendship and hope" in the picture book Just The Two Of Us.

Just The Two Of Us, the story of what happens when a child’s imaginary friend is no longer needed, was chosen ahead of five other titles on a shortlist that spotlighted literary talent from Cornwall, Wales and London.

The charity's prize is awarded in memory of book-loving Oscar Ashton, who died in 2012 of an undiagnosed heart condition aged three and a half. It champions UK picture books and seeks to gently remind parents and carers of the power of early-years reading.

Princess Beatrice became of the charity in March 2017 after helping to judge the prize the previous year. She has written publicly about her struggles with dyslexia as a child, and how the support of her parents and the magic of stories helped her fall in love with reading.

On World Book Day in 2017, she told the Evening Standard: "If my parents ever travelled, they would take time to record some of my favourite books on tape and I would listen to their voices as I fell asleep. [It’s] one of my favourite memories from story-time with my parents.

"Taking the time to read together as a family became a ritual for us and I treasure the memories created whilst poring over the pages of the books my mother would collect for us, many of which I treasure to this day."

Regarding her dyslexia, she added: "I could not understand why I was still reading behind my classmates. It was at this point that stories became one of the key things which inspired me. I was lucky my mother, with her great imagination, took the time to work on these with me. By the time I read Harry Potter, aged 11, I tore through the pages."