Not in Front of the Corgis (12 page)

The Marshal also arranges for diplomats to attend Royal Ascot (in the Royal Enclosure), Garden Parties (where they take their tea in the Royal Marquee) and the most important social event of the year, the Diplomatic Reception which is held in Buckingham Palace every November. This is when he is required to know and be able to recognise every guest in the room, as he has to present them individually to Her Majesty.

The Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office has several other ceremonial responsibilities. Each year two incoming State Visits are made by foreign Heads of State and the Comptroller makes all the
arrangements
, from which member of the Royal Family meets the visitor and conducts them to the Palace (The Queen never travels to airports to greet her guests), to the hoisting of the correct flags along The Mall, and the Guard of Honour in the Forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

And when The Queen attends the State Opening of Parliament, her Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, with his colleague from the Royal Mews (part of his office) arranges the processional details.

Many of his responsibilities go back several centuries, but the attention to detail is as meticulous today as it has ever been. There’s only one standard – perfection.

When Prince Charles and Princess Anne were very young, The Queen decided that they should learn to ride. It was almost as soon as they could walk. The man given the task was the then Crown Equerry, Lt Col Sir John Miller, a retired officer of the Welsh Guards.

John Miller was a shy, introspective bachelor who was totally devoted to The Queen and her family. He was also an expert horseman, in spite of the fact that he belonged to a regiment of foot guards and not the cavalry. He had already introduced the Duke of Edinburgh to carriage driving when arthritis forced him to give up his favourite equestrian sport of polo.

The riding lessons were carried out in the Mews riding school which is seventy-five yards long, so there’s plenty of room to learn to canter. The surface of the school is laid over a six-foot-deep foundation of faggots and peat and when Charles and Anne – and later Andrew and Edward – were learning to ride, loud music would be played from loudspeakers to teach them how to control the beasts if they were out and a military band marched by.

Lieutenant Colonel Miller spent more than a
quarter
of a century in royal service and working from the Royal Mews, he declared it his personal fiefdom, and
even members of the Royal Family deferred to him in transport matters, especially anything to do with horses as he unreservedly expressed his own preference for horsepower to be on four legs rather than under the bonnet of a car.

His greatest pride was his punctuality. He claimed, with every justification, that no royal engagement with which he was involved, ever ran late, even by a minute.

He was therefore horrified when, on the eve of the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the bride-to-be informed him that she wished to exercise the bride’s traditional prerogative and arrive at St Paul’s Cathedral a few minutes behind the scheduled time. The Colonel had been over the route many times, stopwatch in hand, even
instructing
soldiers to throw buckets of water in front of the horses hooves so they would know what to expect if it rained on the day.

The timetables had been printed and distributed to everyone involved, including the media. Miller knew that if he obeyed the soon-to-be Princess of Wales his reputation for punctuality would be in tatters. He spoke to colleagues in the Household, including the Lord Chamberlain, who refused to become involved. He eventually asked The Queen what he should do – and this was only hours before the ceremony was due to start. Her Majesty told him to compromise and that’s what he did.

When Diana arrived at St Paul’s she was seen to be just thirty seconds late. Nobody remarked on the fact and though Sir John was not entirely placated, both sides felt that honour had been satisfied and Diana
gave him a kiss when she returned to the Palace, much to the dismay of her new husband who felt the gesture was taking things a bit too far.

Sir John Miller had a niece who was quite well proportioned and, like him, an excellent rider. In the days when The Queen rode Burmese, a black Canadian mare, in the annual Sovereign’s Birthday Parade (Trooping the Colour), the niece would ride Burmese for several hours before the parade to tire her a little so that there was no danger of the horse becoming too frisky when The Queen, who was, and remains, an excellent horsewoman, was on board.

The Crown Equerry lives during his tenure of office in a magnificent three-storey residence just inside the entrance to the Royal Mews in Buckingham Palace Road. The property is far too big for the average family, almost impossible to heat and the Equerry has to rely on the Royal Collection to help furnish the place as the rooms are so large, most modern furniture would be lost in them.

In Queen Victoria’s day, her Crown Equerry lived in the house in great splendour, with ten hot and cold running servants, all paid for by her. Today, one
part-time
cleaner is employed. No cook, no footmen and no housemaids. Only one thing has remained and that is the original black cast iron cooking oven in the basement kitchen. It hasn’t been used for
generations
. But it is so large and heavy; said to be over two tons, it cannot be moved. So it remains an unseen museum piece.

In addition to his responsibilities in the Royal Mews, the present Crown Equerry has recently been
given the job of Director of Royal Travel, which means he now looks after air travel and the Royal Train as well as transport by horse, carriage and motor car. As there is no longer a dedicated Queen’s Flight, the Royal Family’s flying is now undertaken by No.32 (The Royal Squadron) based at RAF Northolt in West London. But this is not used exclusively by the Royal Family. The squadron also handles flights made by Government ministers.

The Royal Household has had its fair share of rogues in the past but none compares with the man The Queen had trusted with millions of pounds worth of art from the Royal Collection, her Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures, Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO. Blunt was a spy, and had been in the pay of the Russians since the 1930s, and was a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of brilliant undergraduates, who included the notorious Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean, who were recruited to work for Russia and did so until they were uncovered sometime in the 1950s.

Blunt was one of those brilliant academics from Oxbridge who was persuaded that Communism and the Soviet system were preferable to the capitalist
society
of the western world. Yet, he refused to go and live in the East, even when ordered by his KGB masters, and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle working in the Royal Household establishing a reputation as one of the world’s leading art experts.

His credentials were impeccable. Apart from his academic qualifications, he was also a third cousin of The Queen Mother, so he was socially at home in royal circles.

After he had been unmasked as a Soviet spy, it was revealed that as long ago as 1948 he was suspected of working against Britain. Sir Alan (Tommy) Lascelles, King George VI’s private secretary, was heard to refer to Blunt as ‘our Russian spy’. But nobody did anything about him during this period.

Blunt confessed to his spying activities in 1964, and The Queen was informed. However, she decided to keep him in his job, and in return for his confession, and the fact that he had given the names of several of his fellow spies; he was granted immunity from prosecution.

It wasn’t until 1979, fifteen years after his
confession
that his role was finally revealed. The Queen then stripped him of his knighthood and to add to his humiliation he was asked to resign from his clubs, the Athenaeum and the Travellers, much to his dismay.

Blunt’s boss in the Royal Collection was Kenneth [later Lord] Clark, who was to achieve great acclaim as the presenter of the television series
Civilisation
. He was also known as the father of Alan Clark, Member of Parliament, friend of Margaret Thatcher, serial womaniser and the most outrageous diarist – the Boswell of his generation.

With an estimated total of over a million items in the Royal Collection, including the finest
collection
of Fabergé eggs in existence, there are paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, furniture and other
priceless
objets d’art
in what is certainly the most important private art collection in the world.

It is also the department in the Royal Household that consistently shows a profit for The Queen. The Collection grants reproduction rights to a wide range of commercial interests: book and magazine
publishers
, television companies including the BBC and others throughout the world.

Every time a photograph of one of The Queen’s pictures or other works of art appears anywhere in the world (nowhere is exempt), it is stipulated that the words ‘With Her Majesty’s Gracious Permission’ are included. It is also part of the deal that a fee must be paid to the Royal Collection on behalf of The Queen.

The Collection maintains some 2,500 colour transparencies; applications for black and white are diminishing, with more being added every year. It is truly big business, with the sums involved running to hundreds of thousands of pounds as the men and women who organise this section all know this is very much a seller’s market. If customers want something from The Queen’s collection, this is the only place they can go.

Another aspect of the work of the Royal Collection is the loan of valuable works of art to outside
organisations
from time to time. When something that may be worth millions, is borrowed, those on the receiving end have to fulfil a number of stringent conditions such as insurance, transport and the security of the building where the work is being displayed. The
insurance
premiums are prohibitive in many cases, and there is an experienced specialist transport company
that carries all Royal Collection items throughout the United Kingdom. The paperwork is vast and the formalities complex when anything is borrowed.

There is also a body called the Royal Palaces Exhibition Committee, which is responsible for mounting all the displays of royal treasures that change annually in The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and those at other royal palaces.

When some of The Queen’s dresses were exhibited at Buckingham Palace it involved not only the experts from the Collection, but Her Majesty’s personal
assistant
, Angela Kelly, with the final approval coming from The Queen herself.

Money pours into the Royal Collection from a wide variety of sources. The profits from admissions to the Windsor Castle State Apartments, Queen Mary’s Dolls House, the exhibition of Old Master Drawings, The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, entrance to the Royal Mews, as well as the takings from all the shops in royal residences, go into something called the Royal Palaces Presentation Fund. This Fund is
administered
by the Keeper of the Privy Purse, with the Director of the Royal Collection, the Superintendent of Public Enterprises, the Deputy Treasurer to The Queen and the Financial Controller of the Royal Palaces Presentation Fund forming the management committee.

Like any other consumer-oriented business, all sorts of conditions affect their takings. If the weather is too hot, or too wet, the customers don’t come. If there is a transport strike in the UK or just in London, takings will drop off. Bomb threats and political upheaval can
also cause difficulties and have implications in that the Director of the Royal Collection is only able to buy new items or spend money available for repairs and restoration work, if it comes from the profits.

All the shops in the royal palaces, especially Buckingham Palace sell souvenirs at prices that
tourists
are delighted to pay and the Royal Collection uses the latest retail practices to make sure that only the best sellers are stocked.

Some current examples are: fine bone china from the Royal Collection, including a Queen Victoria Tankard at £30, a Windsor Castle Garter Mug at £12.95, an Imperial Russian Yellow Pillbox Clock at £49, a Buckingham Palace Guardsman Childs Mug at £9.95. At Sandringham, Staffordshire pottery is always a best seller with a Sandringham Blue on White Mug at £7.99 very popular with visitors.

At Balmoral, where admission prices are £8.70 for adults with seniors (over sixty) receiving a concession of £1 and children under sixteen paying just £4.60, visitors are allowed only until 31 July each year, because after that The Queen will be in residence and no one gets in while she is at home.

Being in the Highlands of Scotland, the gift shop offers, in addition to the usual items, Balmoral Malt Whisky distilled at Royal Lochnagar for £12.95 or a special bottle of 70cl at £34.99.

The most recent Royal Wedding, that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, gave a welcome impetus to the royal retail trade with a set of five postcards
costing
£4 up to a William and Catherine Cushion in blue velvet embroidered with the couples’ initials and the
date of the wedding. This sells for £85 and to tempt the thousands of American tourists who pay to see around the Palace in the summer months, the prices are converted into US dollars.

When they were trying to decide what items to sell containing the initials of the Duke and Duchess, those in charge of the retail outlets agonised for weeks over whether to use ‘W’ and ‘C’ or ‘W’ and ‘K’ as most people, still refer to the new Duchess as Kate. They finally opted for ‘C’ for Catherine, but obviously the letters WC have another meaning in Britain and the powers-that-be were concerned that the couple might become the butt of crude jokes.

In all the royal bookshops, the biggest seller by far is a slim volume dedicated to the memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. It also happens to be one of the cheapest selling for £6.99. When the book was first published in 1997, to mark Diana’s death, it was expected to sell just a couple of thousand copies as her memory faded. It hasn’t happened and the wedding of William and Catherine has meant a resurgence of interest in William’s mother, so the book just goes on selling.