Not as harsh as it looks

The Queens staff conspire to put an end to her newly-found habit of book-reading by packing her bookworm page, Norman, off on a prestigious course on writing literature. They don't tell her where he's gone, so she has no reason not to believe that, like all the other disappearances in her life, he is not dead.

"Norman of course had not died, just gone to the University of East Anglia, though, as the equerries saw it, this was much the same thing"

Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader