Not in Front of the Corgis (15 page)

When The Queen and Prince Philip had one of their famous picnics in the grounds of Balmoral, Her Majesty used to like to help with the washing up in the early days. But no longer. At eighty-five who could blame her? But Prince Philip still likes to light the barbecue himself and grill the steaks and sausages – sometimes with unwanted results.

Princess Margaret also liked to think she was
domesticated
when she was courting Antony Armstrong Jones. Visiting him at his studio in London’s Docklands, she would try a little dusting and cleaning and washing the occasional plate, but once they were married, that all ended. She didn’t want to do it and neither did
her staff at Kensington Palace want any interference. She also didn’t care for gardening, unlike her husband who enjoyed getting his hands dirty – and The Queen Mother, who said you couldn’t call yourself a real gardener if you didn’t get some earth under your fingernails.

When The Queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, a total of 8,251 guests were
accommodated
in the church, the largest number ever, with every one seated.

Among the older generation of Royals, the late Princess Marina, mother of the present Duke of Kent, had an annual ritual where she would insist on cleaning her collection of bone china. But even here everything was laid on for her, as her former butler, Peter Russell, explained in his book,
Butler Royal:

The entire operation lasted a couple of hours and Marina couldn’t afterwards understand why all the housework couldn’t be as meticulous, not
realising
, of course, that if the staff took as long as she did – just once a year – they would never finish their everyday chores.

Apart from this little example of domesticity, Marina never ventured behind the green baize door and she was said to be an insufferable snob, which was unkind as her values were those of someone who had grown up surrounded by royalty and to whom it would never have occurred to mix socially with ‘ordinary’ men and women. When she heard that Princess Margaret was to marry Antony Armstrong Jones, she remarked, ‘How strange for the daughter of an Emperor to be marrying a subject.’ It wasn’t even an original opinion. The comment was first attributed to Queen Mary when her daughter Mary, the Princess Royal, married Henry, Viscount Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood).

And during the early days of the Second World War, when Britain was suffering the blitz bombing raids night after night, Marina’s private secretary still found time to correspond with the manager of a munitions factory the Princess was due to visit,
stressing
that it was important for women to remove their protective gloves when being presented.

It is a common assumption that every member of the Royal Family is rich. And while it is true that they all live in surroundings that would be considered beyond many people’s wildest dreams, this is mainly through the generosity of The Queen. She provides Grace and Favour homes to all her relations, even if, in recent years she has been forced to increase rents to a level where, for instance, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, are now required to pay £120,000 a year for their magnificent apartment in Kensington Palace.

But while The Queen’s children have all been the recipients of large trust funds, so they will never have to worry about finding the rent or paying Household bills, it hasn’t always been the case that being Royal meant unlimited wealth.

When Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, died in 1968, her will revealed that she left an estate of £76,186 gross, which was reduced by liabilities to £54,121 net. Out of this figure, which was fairly respectable for the time, massive death duties at 67 per cent brought the final figure down to £17,398, the smallest amount ever left by a member of the Royal Family.

This was the sum that was divided between her three children, Eddie (the present Duke of Kent), Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael.

The main reason for the huge percentage of death duties (now called Inheritance Tax) was that Marina had made certain settlements on former employees whom she felt obliged to support, but the gifts had been made within the seven-year exclusion period which meant they were all liable for tax. The same seven-year rule applies today; any gift made over seven
years before the donor dies is exempt from tax; any gift made within six years and three hundred and
sixty-four
days is taxed at 40 per cent.

So Princess Marina, who didn’t have a fortune to begin with, ended her life practically a pauper, just through her own generosity, and the ones to suffer were her own children. However, she need not have remained one of the poor relations. In 1957 she could have become a queen when Crown Prince Olaf of Norway proposed to her, using The Queen Mother as an intermediary. This was the same year that Olaf became King of Norway. Marina thanked him for his offer but gently turned him down saying she was
devoting
the rest of her life to the welfare of her children.

The Prince of Wales is particular about everything. He enjoys cheese and biscuits to end a meal, with both coming from his Duchy of Cornwall estate. He likes his biscuits to be served at a special temperature and the staff keep a warming pan just to maintain them at the perfect level.

If any of his silver or jewellery needs repairs or
servicing
, the article is despatched to Cartier or Garrard, the Crown Jewellers. They are always accompanied by an armed police officer and it is always one of the male staff that carries them. No female servant is permitted to handle the precious articles in case she is attacked.

The Crown Jewellers keep detailed photographs of every important piece of silver and jewellery, so that
if one piece becomes badly damaged, they will know what they should look like when restored.

The Queen keeps 100 dozen bottles of Krug
champagne
in her cellars – even though she loathes the stuff herself – and countless more cases of every other vintage brand. There is a bottle of cognac said to be worth £10,000, as it’s the only one of its kind left in the world. There were four: one was opened by Queen Victoria to celebrate her Silver Jubilee; another by King Edward VII on his sixty-fifth birthday, while the third was drunk by King George VI and Winston Churchill (who was said to have consumed more than half of it himself) at the end of the Second World War in 1945. The Palace is expecting the next royal milestone to be toasted with this exquisite and unique liqueur to fall in February 2012 – the celebration of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee.

ewcomers to the Palace – footmen and housemaids – start on a basic salary of £13,634 a year, which can rise after five years by £2,000 a year. On promotion to Senior Footman, a salary of £15,634 is paid which is the same as the three Head Housemaids. At the time of writing, the Palace is advertising for a Butler with an annual salary of £15,000 plus accommodation, and for a Liveried Helper in the Royal Mews, who is required to have had some experience with horses and who will be seen riding behind The Queen on one of the State Carriages at official ceremonial occasions. The starting salary for this post is £17,169, with the livery provided. They are also looking for people to take on casual work in the ticket offices at £7.75 an hour.

In the Royal kitchens, qualified staff earn more than their colleagues on the other side of the green
baize door. A sous chef could be paid up to £18,256 while senior chefs rise to £27,218.

The Queen’s Royal Chef is the highest paid member of the domestic Household with an annual salary of £45,000.

His opposite number in the liveried staff is the Palace Steward, the senior member of the Master of the Household’s domestic staff. Having worked his way up from being a junior footman over twenty years ago, the Palace Steward now earns around £30,000 a year while his deputy, the Page of the Chambers, is paid only slightly less.

In other departments, for example the Royal Collection, there is a different grading system, with almost every employee being a graduate. The Administrator of the Collection earns around £30,000, while, at the time of writing, they need an official in the Human Resources branch with a starting salary between £30,000 and £35,000.

The most profitable section of the Royal Collection is the Enterprises department that arranges exhibitions and retail sales and the person responsible whose title is Managing Director Royal Enterprises earns over £70,000 a year plus a performance related bonus.

The Queen’s press secretary is not among the highest paid members of her Household, being paid a salary of £65,000 a year, with her staff of thirteen on considerably less. The information officers who handle many of the day-to-day enquiries, all earn around £30,000.

A bone of contention among Palace staff is the amount they are paid in relation to the salaries of their
opposite numbers in Clarence House, working for the Prince of Wales.

The Prince’s private secretary is the highest paid member of the entire Household, earning more than twice that paid to The Queen’s private secretary. But his salary of £300,000 is still not considered over generous by men and women with similar responsibilities in the City; most of whom wouldn’t get out of bed for that sort of money.

Prince Charles’s press secretary, who once worked for Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, is paid three times the salary of The Queen’s press secretary, and in view of the times he has to justify his boss’s expenditure to the public and media, some would say he is worth every penny.

In the early years of her reign, The Queen provided accommodation for everyone who worked for her, free of charge. That has all changed and today 17.5 per cent of everyone’s salary is deducted to pay for living accommodation.

When you look at the rent the Prince of Wales’s private secretary pays for his house within Kensington Palace – £52,500 a year, or a little over a £1,000 a week – it seems excessive at first, even for a man on £6,000 a week. But he still pays four times more than either the Duke of York pays for Royal Lodge, or the Earl of Wessex for Bagshot Park.

The people who are hardest hit though are those at the lower end of the salary scale. If that Liveried Helper in the Royal Mews is allocated a flat, he will have the usual 17.5 per cent of his salary deducted. Which means in real terms he will pay around £2,900
a year or just under £60 a week, out of his weekly wage of a little over £320 – a sizable sum.

In addition to the rent they pay, those tenants of The Queen who occupy self-contained
accommodation
, including members of the Royal Family, pay their own council tax. There is one exception: the Royal chaplains, who are not liable for council tax under special arrangements made for the clergy.

Of course, one has to remember that the properties occupied by staff and members of the Royal Household, are in some of the most sought after areas in Britain. Not only those in London, but at Windsor where a large number of staff have been given the use of mews cottages, flats and houses, with one or two, including Adelaide Cottage (which is nothing like the image one usually has of a chocolate-box cottage; more an elegant country home) is presently the residence of the former Director of the Royal Collection (he still lives there as his wife is the Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle and the tenancy has been transferred to her name). Situated in Windsor Home Park, Adelaide Cottage must be worth several million if placed on the open market.

The Grace and Favour home in Kensington Palace, currently the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (who are not obliged to pay rent) was previously occupied by the private secretary to the Duke of Edinburgh, and he was required to pay both rent and council tax.

The Queen is a loyal landlord, and a number of her former staff, or their widows, live rent-free in apartments in elegant surroundings such as Hampton Court Palace, where there is an absolute warren of
flats, houses and apartments. The majority of these tenants are elderly and some complain (but never to Her Majesty) about the draughty conditions in these ancient buildings.

One of the most gracious Grace and Favour properties in Hampton Court Palace is Wilderness House, just opposite the Maze. The late Lord [Chips] Maclean, the former Lord Chamberlain, was granted the tenancy of the house when he retired from
full-time
Household duties and was appointed Constable of Hampton Court Palace, a sinecure that made few demands on his time.

Lord Maclean died in 1990 and since then his widow has remained the sole occupant of this magnificent property, which is complete with its own ballroom.

The Household employs a number of temporary staff: footmen, waiters and kitchen operatives, when a banquet or reception is planned at the Palace. They need to have had a certain amount of experience and the Deputy Master of the Household, who controls these affairs, knows who will be available and where to contact them.

The money is basic, around £5.50 an hour, with a meal thrown in for good measure. But the jobs are casual and the men and women who take them on are usually employed in catering elsewhere and can manage to get the time off. Hotel and restaurant managers quite like the idea of their staff serving royalty at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

A full-time assistant in the Windsor Farm Shop is employed on an hourly basis, thirty-nine hours a week at £6.40 an hour.

Within the domestic Household there are several grades of servant: footmen, senior footmen, sergeant footmen, Page of the Presence and Page of the Chambers, valets, Yeomen, Travelling Yeomen,
housemaids
, senior housemaids and dressers.

Every one of these is at the lower end of the pay scale. Even the Chief Housekeeper, who supervises the thirteen housemaids, is paid less than £30,000, while Her Majesty’s dressers, her closest personal servants are paid on the same scale as the senior housemaids.

In between the housemaids and seniors are the Housekeeping Supervisors. These ladies oversee up to four Housekeeping Assistants each. One looks after the ‘Chamber’ or second floor of the Palace where the staff bedrooms are located. The Supervisors earn £15,000 with the assistants on a starting salary of £13,000.

In the Royal Mews, where there is a healthy rivalry between the garage staff, who look after the vehicles, and those whose work consists of grooming the horses and maintaining the carriages.

The mechanics and chauffeurs are all qualified men (The Queen does not employ any female chauffeurs) and this is reflected in their pay scale.

The head chauffeur is paid over £28,000 a year with the mechanics and engineers earning only slightly less.

In the stables, as we have seen, a Liveried Helper, the most junior member of the team, starts on a little over £17,000 a year, with yearly increases.

The senior carriage drivers; they are the men who control the horses pulling the State carriages on formal occasions, are paid between £20,000 and £25,000 a year.

The attendants who are seen riding on the rear of the carriages can be Liveried Helpers or Footmen who have been trained for this duty. But only one of the men is a member of the Royal Household, the man always seen immediately behind The Queen is a police bodyguard, wearing an identical livery to the
attendant
for obvious reasons – but not on the same money.

The gardens at Buckingham Palace are
immaculate
, as one would expect. Covering thirty-nine acres, with a 150-metre herbaceous border and a lake where black swans once swam before they were all killed by marauding urban foxes, eleven gardeners work
full-time
maintaining the flowerbeds and massive lawns in pristine condition.

The Palace has a system for training gardeners, employing a number of youngsters as apprentices. They are paid between £12,000 and £14,000 a year, with an increase to £16,000 when they qualify to work unsupervised.

Clerical staff and office managers are paid
according
to their rank and responsibilities.

Accountants in the Privy Purse Office, the Personnel and Pensions managers and the Master of the Household’s senior office staff earn between £30,000 and £56,000.

The salary scale for typists, secretaries and clerks, is between £18,000 and £25,000.

Everyone is taxed at source; nobody is employed on contract and there are no self-employed men or women in the Royal Household.

All expenses are scrutinised, as transparency is the policy in all Palace finances. Senior staff travel first
class by rail in Britain and business class when flying abroad on Royal duties.

In terms of sheer value for money, the Royal Household is among the most efficient business organisations in the country, if not in the world. If staff were on overtime or piecework rates the wage bills would be astronomical. But dedicated servants, both domestic and clerical, work literally hundreds of extra hours because they regard themselves as
professionals
with a remarkable capacity for hard work.

The Queen is aware that the majority of her Household could more than double their salary if they decided to work elsewhere, in industry or commerce, and she appreciates their loyalty.

What she doesn’t offer is more money. Her Majesty is restricted by the amount she receives from the Civil List and while her senior aides, those in charge of the six main departments, could hardly be said to be on the bread line, those right at the bottom of the pay chain, still languish on wages and salaries that are below the national average.

Even so, a footman who just ten years ago would have been lucky to get £100 a week, is now paid nearly £300 a week – and together with all the other benefits – laundry, heating, light, meals and subsided drinks – there is no shortage of young men and women who are willing to spend a few years in the service of the Monarch – mainly in the hope of moving to a better paid job later.

Some of the traditionalists in the Royal Household cannot accept that accountants, to whom the cardinal
sin is for a department to go into the red, now run the Palace.

The days when money didn’t matter are long gone and are over for good. Just as in any other business, the bottom line must be profitability and The Queen’s Keeper of the Privy Purse is without doubt the most cost-conscious person in Buckingham Palace. Some of his practices may be unpopular but, in the long run, his word is law and as far as he is concerned the ends always justify the means.