Not in Front of the Corgis (11 page)

The Queen’s racing interests are widely known and the Treasurer’s office liaises with her racing manager regarding the expenses incurred. She has been heard to say that owning a racehorse is like fitting a tap to your pocket. And as wealthy as she undoubtedly is, there is a limit to what she can afford. In the world of racing, Her Majesty is not even in the front rank when it comes to buying the best horses. The oil-rich Middle-East sheiks and one or two Irish owners leave her standing when it comes to bidding wars. And she has yet to achieve her lifelong ambition of owning a winner of The Derby.

The Keeper of the Privy Purse is Receiver-General of the Duchy of Lancaster and he works closely with The Queen’s bankers, Coutts, and also with her legal advisers, the old-established firm of Farrers in the city of London. It was Farrers who handed the divorces of Prince Margaret and Lord Snowdon, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of York. For them it was all in a day’s work.

Farrer & Co, to give them their proper title, was founded in 1701, since when it has been continuously associated with royalty. In 1788, the then Duke of York borrowed money from Farrer and also from his
bankers Coutts and the following year, 1789, Farrers acted for the Duke of York when he successfully sued
The Times
for libel after they suggested he and his brother were not altogether delighted at the recovery of their father, George III. The editor of the paper was sent to prison for a year.

Farrer & Co has had a long list of celebrity clients including, in 1854, Charles Dickens, who employed them when he was buying a property.

Every member of British royalty since the
beginning
of the eighteenth century has had cause to thank the company for its dedication to their well-being in legal matters. Farrer & Co probably know more royal secrets than anyone else in the world.

The Keeper of the Privy Purse is supported by a large team of professionals, with forty-six men and women in his office and a further seventy-three in the adjoining Finance and Property Branch, where they administer the salaries, pensions and the Personnel Office. They even have a small staff devoted to the supply of stationery throughout the Palace. People sometimes wonder how it is that within hours of a royal death being announced, all letters and envelopes sent from the Royal Household are black-edged. It’s simply because this office maintains a permanent supply, ready for any such occasion.

Apart from the Keeper himself and his two senior deputies – the Director of Finance and Director of Property Services, both of whom earn over £90,000 a year – salaries are relatively modest in this
department
, even though the requirements for positions can be demanding. For instance, at the time of
writing a Systems Support Officer is needed, based at Buckingham Palace. The specification for the job includes being educated to degree level, having
excellent
IT skills, accurate documentation skills and
holding
a current driving licence in case he or she is needed to work at another royal location. And for all this, the successful applicant will be paid the princely sum of £19,055 a year.

This is by far the largest department in the Royal Household with over 250 men and women employed in a variety of jobs from kitchen porter and footman to Palace Steward.

Every meal, every room, every function held at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and at Balmoral, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Sandringham comes directly under his responsibility.

Air Vice-Marshal (now Air Marshal) Sir David Walker is the current Master of the Household. In 2011, in addition to his £120,000 salary, he was given the added bonus of being created a Knight of the Royal Victorian Order, so he is now Sir David.

Within his bailiwick are five sub-divisions: ‘G’ (General) Branch, which looks after the
entertainment
and ceremonial side of the Palace; ‘F’ (Food Branch is responsible for preparing and cooking and, most importantly, presentation of the food at the royal tables – and for the Household; ‘H’ (Housekeeping) Branch maintains the cleaning of all the royal
residences. If the Chief Housekeeper decides some of the sheets on The Queen’s bed should be replaced, she has to obtain the permission of the Master of the Household before she can buy new ones. He then has to ask the Keeper of the Privy Purse for the money. ‘C’ (Craft) Branch includes the upholsterers, French polishers and other craftsmen who are on constant call to restore, repair and conserve the valuable furniture at every royal home from their base at Windsor Castle. If a cushion, carpet or pair of curtains needs repair, then it is ‘C’ Branch who are called on to undertake the job. A seamstress at Windsor Castle once spent days sewing the ends of a pair of curtains after a couple of the Corgis had chewed their way through and tried to swing on them – all without once being scolded. Then there is the Central Office, which arranges, with the office of the Lord Chamberlain, the guest lists and seating plans at official events such as a State Banquet. This can be quite a headache when arranging seating plans at which certain individuals are on the ‘must-have’ guest list and the office is besieged with requests from members of the Household, who will also be attending, not to sit next to a particular man or woman.

The Ladies-in-Waiting used to plead with the office not to put them near the late Ted Heath, the former Prime Minister, who was regarded as the most boring dinner guest ever seen at the Palace. Heath was uncomfortable with women – and not much better with men – and several of the Ladies said they had spent an entire formal meal sitting next to him
without
him uttering a single word to them.

With a staff of over 250, it requires an
administration
team to coordinate the management of the
department
and the Chief Clerk is the man with day-to-day responsibility for the hundred and one details that go into the planning and preparation, including the 600 or so meals a day provided for the Royal Household. The Chief Clerk is paid around £30,000 a year. If he did the same job in one of London’s top hotels, he would earn at least twice that amount.

When young men and women join the Master of the Household’s Department as trainee footmen – and they call the females footmen – they are
introduced
to a rigorous training scheme, starting with a section entitled Waiting at Table. There are periods of specific instruction beginning Introduction to the Dining Room, Reading of Orders, Reading of Menus, Appearance and Behaviour, followed by lessons in the Types of Plates and how they should be handled and the Order and Continuity of the Meals. A vital part of their training concerns the Handling of Food: Main Dishes, Vegetable Dishes and Sauce Boats. Then comes Serving Dessert, Serving Coffee and finally Clearing the Dining Room. The above sections are all explained in initial upper case in the written orders of the Deputy Master of the Household. The
trainees
are tested at specific times, before being given an assessment of proficiency and finally, when they have satisfied the Sergeant Footman a record signed by their trainer is placed in their personnel file.

The nest stage of their training involves duties in the cellars, where they learn how to open bottles of wine, how to decant it and how to recognise different
types of glasses and which should be used for particular drinks. Their final section is lessons in how to serve wine at table and at cocktail parties.

Considering the Lord Chamberlain is the Head of the Royal Household, he has very little to do with the
day-to
-day running of the department that bears his name.

The Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office is the man with that responsibility and in an
organisation
like the Royal Household, where attention to detail is taken for granted, this office is where it all begins and ends.

Every investiture at Buckingham Palace, as well as the single one held at the Palace of Holyroodhouse and one other at Cardiff Castle, is the responsibility of the Comptroller. All the ceremonial arrangements come under his jurisdiction and on a personal level, he is the man who instructs those who are about to be honoured, in the way they should conduct themselves. More than one soon-to-be knight has cause to thank the Comptroller for the courteous and humorous way in which he has guided them through the labyrinth of the protocol when they stand before The Queen waiting for the sword to descend on their shoulder.

He even shows the ladies how to curtsy and if they laugh at him, all the better. He knows it is one way to get them relaxed before they enter the State Ballroom.

Lt Col. Andrew Ford, the current Comptroller, is one of the most popular heads of department and
his staff are always prepared to go that extra mile on his behalf.

Considering he is the lowest paid of the top six, just scraping into the six figure category on £101,000 a year, there doesn’t seem to be any logic in having him controlling the department whose activities are the most seen by the public and the media.

In recent years one of the most
recognisable
Comptrollers was Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Johnston, of the Grenadier Guards. Known as Johnnie to his colleagues and every member of the Royal Family, he served in the Lord Chamberlain’s office for more than twenty years and in 1981 at the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, it was the splendid figure of Johnnie, in scarlet uniform, who was seen by millions on television handing the
soon-to
-be Princess of Wales from the Glass Coach onto the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.

He later told me that it was one of the proudest days of his life. He also said that when they returned to Buckingham Palace the Princess kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for all he had done. In his twenty years at the Palace no one had ever done that before and he wasn’t sure which had given him the greater shock: the kiss or being shouted at by the sergeant major when he first entered Sandhurst as a cadet officer.

One of the most intriguing parts of the Comptroller’s department is a tiny office located above a former dungeon in St James’s Palace where just eleven people work.

Its full title is Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood and this is where the secrets are kept of
who is to be awarded a knighthood. Twice a year the New Year’s Honours List and The Queen’s Birthday Honours List are published and it is here that the names and decorations are finalised. When you realise that with twenty-two investitures held at Buckingham Palace every year, plus those in Edinburgh and Cardiff, to which up to 150 men and women are invited, the total number of OBEs, MBEs, CBEs and all the other awards amounts to a staggering 3,000 medals with each one attached to its own distinctive ribbon and placed in its own leather box.

The attention to detail is meticulous. No mistakes are permitted. Though there was one hilarious occasion when someone dropped a cushion holding a number of awards during an investiture ceremony in the State Ballroom. The Queen solved the problem saying, ‘Just put them any way you can. I’ll give them anything and you can sort it out afterwards.’ So a gentleman who was expecting to be made a Commander of the British Empire, found that for a few minutes at least, he had been demoted to a mere MBE. While a lady who had been told she was to be awarded the most junior level found she had been elevated to the highest – for the moment it took to get her back to the side room where it was indeed all sorted out. Her Majesty’s reaction had never been revealed, but it was she who saved the day – and the red faces of her staff. Throughout the entire incident she didn’t turn a hair and just carried on as if nothing had happened. That’s what fifty years of royal training had achieved.

When one realises how long the Honours system has been in operation, it is hard to imagine the
numbers involved when Central Chancery say they have the names and dates of every recipient of every award going back to 1348 when King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter.

The Comptroller’s office also makes a healthy profit for the Crown as guests and recipients at Investitures are not allowed to bring cameras or videos inside the Palace. Instead, a team of professional photographers and cameramen are contracted to provide copies of the entire proceedings, with the individual being honoured inserted, at a cost of around £120 plus £25 for a set of still photographs. As nearly everyone takes advantage of the offers it is not too difficult to do the sums.

St James’s Palace is a warren of hidden courts and alleys where different members of the Royal Family live and where several departments of the Household have their offices. A section of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office is based in Ambassador’s Court. It is the post of Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps who arranges for all Ambassadors and High Commissioners to be collected from their residences when they are due to present their credentials to The Queen. Together with the Crown Equerry, the Marshal, who is always a retired military officer of senior rank, makes sure the incoming emissary knows that he or she is required to do when they meet Her Majesty for the first time, and that they are aware that although the ceremony
invariably
takes place in the morning, full evening dress is mandatory.

The Marshal also assures every diplomat that the size and importance of their country makes no
difference to The Queen and the way in which they are received. Everyone gets the same treatment – large or small. He knows how important it is for
representatives
of smaller countries not to feel patronised. A horse-drawn carriage is sent to the residence, for the ambassador or High Commissioner, with cars to bring family members and others who are to be presented. The audience lasts for exactly the same period and The Queen is punctilious in observing the correct
procedure
for each one.