The question isn’t just how extravagant and “luxurious” the rooms are. There are more basic questions: Does all the plumbing work? (No) Can you adjust the heat to maintain a comfortable temperature in each living area? (No, not really) Can you get food from the kitchens to the event spaces and living quarters and have it arrive at the appropriate temperature (hot food still hot, etc.)? (Eh, it depends) Are you going to get shocked on the wiring? (Maybe) Is the roof intact? (For awhile, the staff were putting out buckets in the Picture Gallery every time it rained.) Is the masonry secure? (A chunk of falling stonework nearly hit a police guard a few years ago.) Is there asbestos? (Yes) etc.
All the velvet and gilding in the world won’t make up for drafty rooms, leaky roofs, and dodgy drains.
The question is how much money the Queen would have allocated for her personal comfort. For the public spaces, I can attest that the plumbing in the gent’s toilet worked, the cafe (orangey? it was years ago) could provide hot drinks, and I didn’t see any rain buckets. However, you’re right that Buckingham Place has roof problems.
But an assertion that that would have affected the Queen’s routine life would be extraordinary. There’s no way that the Queen had to deal with leaky roofs in her personal quarters. The woman was a multi-millionaire.
Relating to Charles III, it may well be that Clarence House is more comfortable than Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is undergoing extensive maintenance, so that’s likely true ate the present time. I personally don’t care where he sleeps. But I doubt he’s choosing his bedroom based on the least leaky ceiling.
There’s a story floating around about the time a plumber was called in to make a repair in the Queen’s private bathroom; reportedly, as he worked to fix the chain-pulled cistern he leaned against it and part of it fell away from the wall, necessitating rather more extensive and urgent repairs. Photographs of her meeting various dignitaries occasionally revealed a cheap electric heater tucked into the corner of the room or sitting in the fireplace.
Yes, but she comes from a social milieu in which living in large, grand but draughty, uncomfortable and inconvenient houses is considered perfectly normal, and not something to complain about. Leaking roofs, sure, you fix if you have the cash, but ineffective heating or temperamental plumbing? Only the nouveau riche complain about such matters.
I just saw the trailer for the new season of The Crown. Made it seem to be about nothing but Diana and Charles’ relationship. That’s got to be embarrassing for a new king, half his subjects watching a prolonged dive into ones marital problems.
Not really. It’s been 25 years since Diana died, thirty since they separated. Most Britons weren’t born yet, were too young to care, or weren’t in Britain while the Charles and Diana plus Camilla show was live.
I agree. The broad outlines of the story are well-known, not everyone watches The Crown or has Netflix, and most are aware it’s not a documentary, to put it mildly. Meanwhile C&C continue to potter around the usual sorts of events, without any noticeable signs of disdain for either or both of them. Certainly, she hasn’t been seen to put a foot wrong in the smiley/wavey/chitchat side of things, and has even taken on some more edgy patronages, such as charities on sexual exploitation and domestic violence. As for any embarrassment factor, one of the key skills for royalty is not seeing what they don’t want to see, or at least not showing that they’ve seen it.
No one I know is watching it. The die-hard Diana supporters think it will show her in a bad light, those who thought “That bloody woman” was an apt description think the opposite, and the rest of us really don’t care.
Those were her personal quarters in a Government owned and run building not her private property (like Balmoral or Sandringham). She could not just pick up the phone and call repair crews like she could there.
There’d be tiers of local management to take care of things like that, and yes, sometimes they would have to do the royal equivalent of sucking their teeth and saying “It’s going to cost you”, depending on the job. With a big old palace, it might even be moving out for a while. It needed a Prime Minister to tell her there wasn’t going to be a replacement Royal Yacht.
Changing the Regency Act seems like a pretty obvious step to me; neither Harry nor Andrew are suitable to serve as Counselor or State. Beatrice & Eugenie are; but so are Anne & Edward.
That’s the problem. Andrew and (almost certainly) Harry are both domiciled in the UK and neither is disqualified from becoming monarch. If you think either or both of them are not suitable to serve as counsellors of state, then you need to amend the legislation to exclude them.
But that raises the question of, well, are they eligible to serve as regents? Should they be excluded from that too? Which then opens up the question of whether they should eligible to serve as monarch? Should they be excluded from the line of succession?
It would seem weird to pass a law saying that Andrew and/or Harry couldn’t serve as counsellor of state in place of the monarch temporarily but could serve as monarch permanently. But if you’re going to start passing judgment about the fitness of people to serve as monarch on the basis of their personal characteristics, well, bang, there’s your hereditary principle gone right there, and what is left of your basis for monarchy at all?
