Where Else? «

Where Else?

Monday 25th July 2022

…than the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace to be quietly bickering with Royston King and Genevieve Suzy. ‘Can’t we just linger here a moment?‘ Royston protested. But Genevieve was rearing for afternoon tea on the terrace. In a superb fitted afternoon dress by Roland Mouret, with bag and difficult ice-blue satin shoes, she was not to be argued with.

Buckingham Palace is such a cozy house and at the Press Preview for the Summer Opening one has it to oneself.

We were back, for the Press Preview of the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace, a fixture in my calendar if not in anybody else’s.

The scale is tiny – you can see straight through from the back to the front. Access to one room is through another as in a humble cott. Thus the intimate feel, although the rooms themselves tower with gilt and glass and pillars. I think, if Airbnb-ing at Buckingham Palace, as one well might be, one would have the Green Drawing Room for the mornings. Lunch in the State Dining Room, of course, followed by coffee in the Blue Drawing Room, then the Garden, the Music Room for tea, saving the White Drawing Room for a TV supper. The Throne Room for games, such as sitting on the thrones, and the Picture Gallery for exercise on wet days. That would only leave the Ballroom and Ball Supper Room as possibilities. I suppose one could give a ball, but it would be expensive.

I adore Buckingham Palace. The suite of rooms on the Garden Front are amongst the finest known, truly important interiors by Nash in their own right but also, gloriously, living State Rooms as no other. It’s a devastatingly grand architectural scheme of cornices and pediments and pilasters but the colours are simply afternoon tea. Such delight. Each room has been lightly rolled in Royal history, moving forward from Regency origins. In the White Drawing Room is an Edwardian powdering, while the hand of Queen Mary is seen in the Blue Drawing Room with the blue velour flock on the walls, now faded like ink. The State Dining Room is where Prince Albert exerted some pressure.

We went into the Ball Supper Room for the exhibition which changes each year. In the gloom, blazing in a glass case – I couldn’t believe it – the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland. To gaze actually upon it, this crucial tiara. She wore it for banknotes and coins. Early in the reign, it was the tiara, at the core of her majesty. You can see right inside it, its secret structure and the piece of elastic across the back to hold it in place.

Other incredible jewels in the Ball Supper Room – the Vladimir Tiara with the emerald drops, the Cambridge Emeralds, the State Diadem and the Nizam of Hyderabad necklace, among others. You must go. Genevieve said she doesn’t think as much of emeralds as she does of sapphires. The Cambridge emeralds are smooth and you can see confusion inside them as with a boiled sweet. They don’t have the allure and mystery of diamonds.

I hear that Rishi Sunak has been criticised for wearing a suit costing £3500. But Grannie’s Chips (i.e. Cullinan III and IV) are worth £50 million.