A Very Royal Christmas: Sandringham Secrets –  Hw

Sandringham is the place where every Christmas the royal family come together to celebrate. Christmas is the one time of the year when the Queen does get the family together and it’s the one time of the year that she really enjoys. They tuck into the finest food. There was a lot of pressure. We don’t even want to mess up our own Christmas day, let alone the royal family’s Christmas day.

Never forget who goes first. No one starts eating until the Queen does. My lords, pray be seated. No one leaves the table until the Queen does. You wait for her to take the lead. Drink the Queen’s favorite cocktail, Dubonnet and gin. So basically it’s a pint. And then uh Happy Christmas, your highness. >> >> Oh, Jesus.

Does the Queen really drink that? And often open a surprising set of presents. And the corgis get presents on Christmas morning. Because I had to wrap bones and chocolate drops and toys in Christmas paper rather loosely. At least 5 months in the planning, a Sandringham Christmas is like no other. Thousands of fairy lights, 20-ft-high Christmas trees.

On hand, an army of 200 staff. For the Queen, a fun day with the family. Not that long ago, the Queen was still dashing around along the corridors playing hide and seek with one of her youngest grandchildren. We take a peek inside a world full of festive surprises. Every year, Charles, Andrew, Edward, and Anne still get a Christmas stocking from their mother.

The secrets of a very royal Christmas at Sandringham. I think it’d be interesting to spend Christmas day with the royal family. I’d enjoy, I think. Like everyone, the Royals, especially the Queen, look forward to their family Christmas. Christmas at Sandringham is a very big deal.

When it comes to a royal Christmas, the royal family don’t do anything by halves. So, Christmas is a very special, very happy, always memorable family occasion. What is wonderful, actually, is to see the Queen relax and unwind around the table with her family. It doesn’t happen very often because everybody is so busy, everybody’s traveling around the world, that to actually get everybody together is pretty impossible.

Christmas is the one time of the year when the Queen does get the family together, and it’s the one time of the year that she really enjoys. And maybe, just for a few minutes, she stops being Queen and is a mom. But being the Royals, it’s never that ordinary. Sandringham, in North Norfolk, is no country cottage.

Set in 20,000 acres of fields and forest, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, almost 200 staff bedrooms, 78 bathrooms, plus its own ballroom. And it was a favorite home of her father and grandfather. There’s a full staff at Sandringham who stay at Sandringham as a housekeeper and the maids and the ground staff and the gardeners, and they look after the house even when the Queen isn’t there.

And if the Queen has a full house, which is how she absolutely loves Christmas, some of the Royals are put into staff cottages and other cottages on the estate. Despite its grandeur, this is where the Queen truly feels at home. Sandringham is a royal home, and it has a feel of intimacy about it.

The rooms aren’t as baronial as those at Windsor Castle, but they’re pretty impressive nonetheless. And without a doubt, isn’t this a Christmas scene we’d all like to take a sneaky peek at? Listen, I think it would be interesting to spend Christmas Day with the royal family. I’d enjoy it, I think. The royal family’s Christmas is sort of I don’t know, it’s like being stuck in a time warp, really, isn’t it? It’s castles.

It’s too much tweed. I would petition to be sat at the kids’ table. I don’t want to be near any of the royal family once they’ve had a drop of alcohol. Everything is fraught with danger. I think once they’re on their own and it’s Christmas, I think they might let their hair down a bit. Have a bit of fun. >> >> While the Queen wants everyone to enjoy themselves, nothing is left to chance.

The Queen starts her Christmas preparations early. While the rest of us are basking in the sunshine on our summer holidays, the Queen is in Balmoral and is personally signing all 750 of her Christmas cards in August. Everything is planned down to the very last detail. The floral arrangements, the food, and everything is signed off by the Queen.

Sandringham would need five chefs. One on the pastry section. Uh you’ve got one doing the vegetables, one doing the sauces, one in the larder, and of course, you know, the senior chef sort of overseeing everything that went on. And you were feeding about 100 people in the dining room. The menu doesn’t change.

It stays the same from year to year. It’s often written in French. French has always been the culinary language for all time. The Queen speaks fluent French. She just thinks it’s normal. Once the big plans are made, the Queen’s eye turns to the finer details. So, she heads to Sandringham early, the Thursday before Christmas. These days, she takes public transport.

Her Majesty goes by train to Sandringham and has her own little compartment. It’s a public train. She always takes the morning train and she always books the first-class carriage. So, if you’re a lucky commuter, you might just get to catch a glimpse of the monarch boarding that first-class carriage. The train leaves on time.

Not many trains leave on time, but this particular one does leave on time. And off she goes and arrives at King’s Lynn, hops in a car and goes down to Sandringham. >> >> Once she’s arrived, one thing the Queen is expected to do is check out her Christmas trees. There is never a shortage of Christmas trees because the Queen has a farm on which Christmas trees are grown in Sandringham.

The farm produces around a thousand Christmas trees, which are sold locally, though the Queen gets first pick, obviously. The whole tradition of Christmas trees was started by the Queen’s ancestors. Christmas was more or less invented by Prince Albert. I mean, he brought that whole Christmas tree tradition from Germany to Great Britain in the uh mid-19th century.

So, really we do have the royal family to thank for the quite unusual tradition of bringing an outdoor tree indoors to light and celebrate Christmas. There is one tree the Queen likes to have the final say on, the tree that goes into the dining room where the presents are laid on Christmas Eve. She likes to decorate that tree with the younger members of the royal family.

It’s such fun hanging on the last pieces of tinsel and those baubles with granny. The Queen is also a great lover and believer in tradition. So, she still dresses one of the Christmas trees at Sandringham in the glass handmade decorations that Queen Victoria used to use. >> >> On Christmas Eve, the months of organizing all come together.

The Royals run their Christmas in a sort of military style. It’s all quite well timed. One of the things I don’t like certainly about my Christmas is the fact that it’s just a complete panic. Members of the Royal Family arriving at Sandringham for Christmas know exactly what to expect. Everybody knows, dare I say it, they know their place in the pecking order.

The Queen is there to greet everybody, but the members of the Royal Family arrive in seniority. >> For example, uh Mike and Zara Tindall, they’re way down the pecking order, so they might well arrive first. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are the last Royals to arrive being the most senior Royals after the Queen.

And on arrival, they are treated like royalty. Even down to unpacking their cases and making them feel at home. Wouldn’t like them opening up my suitcase, though. No. They know everything. They They know you bought underpants you wear. Oh, no. As part of the festive traditions, the Queen likes to surprise her grandchildren.

As young boys, William and Harry got the chance to play on the Queen’s very own vintage fire engine. What could be more magical than for two little [singing] boys who are about three and five with their first cousins, Zara and Peter, being treated to an authentic original fair engine at Sandringham with all of the bells and the ladders.

It’s a magical moment for any child, any child. Until recently, William and Harry had their own Christmas traditions at Sandringham, their annual kickabout, Royals versus Staff. William an Aston Villa fan, Harry an Arsenal fan, both of them on different teams in their kits, playing with friends and playing with some courtiers, and this football match on Christmas Eve became very much a tradition.

I’d be the referee, I think. I could Yeah, I could I couldn’t run up and down much. I’d be the referee and I made sure the Aston Villa side won it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’d cheat a bit. I’d let the staff win. Harry and William, when they were teenagers, were enormously competitive. They didn’t hold back. I mean, you know, they would chop each other down if they were going for the ball together.

Can you imagine Prince Philip in goal at 99? How are you, sir? Are you well, sir? What do I look ill? Duke of Edinburgh, I think he’d actually be quite good at football. I think he’d take no prisoners, bit of a Vinnie Jones, you know, just some some broken bones, put it that way. I think there’d be a couple of butlers being taken off on a stretcher.

Once the final whistle’s blown, the Royals turn to another tradition, the delivery of the Christmas hamper, and it’s a corker. The royal Christmas hamper, of course, comes from the Queen’s green grocers, Fortnum and Masons in Piccadilly, and it’s like an Aladdin’s cave, really. It really is a hamper like no other, packed with hundreds of the Queen’s favorite treats.

>> There’s everything from turkey and ham and foie gras. But not just any foie gras. This is a foie gras en croute. To champagne and claret. Stilton, chutney, foods that I can’t even pronounce but would love also to eat. >> Chocolates and goodies to eat after dinner. And it comes in an enormous laundry hamper with F&M on the side.

It’s a sign of class. The royal Christmas at Sandringham. Christmas Eve is when the family arrive. It’s also when they break with British tradition. In keeping with their German roots, the royals open presents on Christmas Eve, which um isn’t just a nudge to their history, it’s also actually quite practical.

Christmas Day is very much a religious day for the Queen, so really opening presents on Christmas Eve makes sense. So they have tea first. And then the lights go out. The drawing room doors open and there is the Christmas tree twinkling away. In the royal family go and let loose. There’s ripping, there’s tearing, there’s sharing, and they have fun away from the prying eyes of the staff.

This is really the moment that the children and the grandchildren love because uh you know, on the signal from the Queen, they can all just pile in and start ripping off the wrapping paper and see what they’ve been given. While some of us would have sleepless nights about getting the perfect present, there’s one golden rule which if followed means you can’t go wrong.

She’s got everything anyone could possibly need, so you have to think of something which she might use. For the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, thermals. What, cashmere bedsock? Yeah, I’d give those sort of thing. Keep them warm. You’re secretly hoping that, you know, everyone gets a Ferrari or, you know, you’ll get Barbados.

But actually, you don’t. The kind of trend at the palace is only to get gag gifts. They get stuff basically, each of them sends sort of a courtier to Tiger. >> >> They buy out the place. And if you can achieve something that’s that’s tongue in cheek and will have the Queen laughing, then you’ve really done well that Christmas.

Yes, what the royals really want is a present that will make them laugh. The more kitsch, the better. Nothing ostentatious or terribly expensive or lavish. That doesn’t really go down very well with the Queen. When William and Harry were thinking of presents to give to granny and grandpa, Harry thought he’d give a pool of plastic sick.

Because that would be fun, wouldn’t it? William and Harry were always the jokers. And I remember the Queen exclaiming one day when she lifted the the lid on the sugar basin there was a fly in the sugar, of course. Wasn’t a real fly. It’s a plastic fly put there by Prince Harry. The Duke of Edinburgh, again, loves a good laugh.

And when Prince Harry put a whoopee cushion under his seat, he found that hilarious, as did everyone else. Of all the royals, it’s Harry who embraces the gag present culture. I remember one year, Prince Harry, unmarried in those days, was spotted at Selfridges buying a feathered thong. Now, we all wondered who in earth this was going to be going to.

Topping the list of best present ever, the everyone’s favorite Prince Harry got his grandma, the Queen, a shower cap which says, “Ain’t life a bitch?” Useful. Shower cap. Now, you know the Queen’s hair is always impeccable. I think she would have taken off her paper crown and put that on and everyone would have howled with laughter.

Oh, mother, you’re so funny. Well done. Where’s Andrew? As I know the Queen doesn’t take a shower, no. Don’t think it would have been worn. The Queen likes to take a bath. Meghan’s present of a singing hamster to the Queen was a huge hit, especially when the dogs found it. I would presume a furry clockwork singing hamster, which would be torn to pieces by the corgis in seconds.

Good present for the corgis. Not so good for the Queen. And there’s Princess Anne’s gift of a toilet seat to her elder brother. Of course the royals love lavatorial humor. It’s the public school upbringing. And why wouldn’t Prince Charles like a white leather loo seat from his sister, Anne? Of course he would.

What did we used to call the loo? We used to call it the throne. You go and sit on the throne. So, giving him a leather-bound loo seat was really Princess Anne’s way of saying, “Well, here we are. You’ve got your own personal throne.” Sometimes though, the presents really do come in useful. Prince Philip loved to cook on the grill, and especially at Sandringham.

And I know that one of his gifts, someone bought him a pepper mill with when you pressed it, there was a a torch on the end. And so, you could see what you were putting the pepper on, and they absolutely adored that. They tend to give each other practical things. The Queen, for example, often gets pairs of rubber gloves for washing up.

And yes, she does do the washing up, particularly on those picnics that the royals like up in Scotland. One of the things I kind of like about the royal family is that they’re not actually as posh as people assume they are. So, they have stuff in Tupperware, and they probably would be wearing paper hats.

Queen would probably be wearing an amusing paper crown. After the presents, time for the royal black tie and ball gown supper. One occasion when the men dress to impress. The men wear Windsor coats. They’re a gift from the Queen. So, instead of a black dinner jacket, you wear a Windsor jacket, which has red lapels.

A jacket to wear if you are in the family club. The Christmas Eve formal dinner marks the first of the festive meals. The most extraordinary food made with only the finest ingredients and cooked to perfection. It doesn’t just start the day before Christmas. It’s weeks and weeks and weeks before.

There’s so much planning involved. You’ve got to order all the turkeys. Christmas puddings have to be made. And the way Sandringham worked is there was no equipment there because Sandringham was used by the Prince of Wales. The Queen’s chefs didn’t leave any equipment there in the kitchens because we’d lose it. The royals reserve Christmas Eve for one of their best meals of the festive holiday.

The menu filled with the Queen’s favorites. It tends to be locally caught shrimps to start and then either game or duck or Norfolk lamb followed by something like a tart tatin or a souffle for pudding. And what would Christmas be without chocolate? Well, the Queen is known for having a sweet tooth. She absolutely loves chocolate.

So, one of the Queen’s favorite dishes is the chocolate perfection pudding. It’s a rich pastry shell and then in there it has a layer of cinnamon meringue. And then some whipped cream with more meringue into that. And then another layer of chocolate and like a chocolate meringue on top of that. And then lots of grated chocolate on top of that as well.

So, when you cut into it, there are all these layers, and it’s just so rich and so so creamy, and it’s just the you know, the perfect pudding for for that time of year at Christmas. But, it’s not just about the food. Accompanying every course, a selection of the finest wines. And the Queen knows exactly what she wants. The Queen particularly likes champagne and white wines.

So, Christmas isn’t Christmas without a bottle of Krug or a bottle of Chateau Margaux. But then, you don’t just need one, do you? You’ll need a dozen at least. Like most of us, the Queen enjoys the spirit of Christmas. The Royals like a drink, we all know that. And Her Majesty’s no exception. At lunchtime, she will have a gin and Dubonnet.

Half gin, half Dubonnet, two lumps of ice and a slice of lemon. When she comes down to the drawing room, she would like a martini. Maybe two. And then, a glass of wine at dinner. Maybe two. So, basically, gin, generous portion, cuz it’s Christmas. And then, Dubonnet, and just same portion as the gin. So, basically, it’s a pint.

And then, uh happy Christmas, Your Highness. >> >> Oh, Jesus. But, there’s a couple of things you won’t find on the Royal menu. No garlic. Garlic is not served in Royal food. We couldn’t use it on the menu when she was at the table. Uh I don’t think she hated it. I think it’s just something that was considered antisocial.

It’s not very pleasant secondhand. And she knows that she has to meet a lot of people. Seafood is also something that she is quite wary about eating, as is the Duke of Edinburgh. And the one thing you absolutely won’t find on the Christmas royal table are oysters. They may be a delicacy, and many people do enjoy them at this time of year, and but not the royals.

After such sumptuous food and drink, there is one rumored ritual which proves what a good time the royal guests have had. It dates back to King Edward the VII’s time, over 100 years ago. Rumor has it that guests are weighed upon arrival at Sandringham, and weighed again on a pair of old royal scales to make sure that they have been properly fed during their stay.

As Christmas Eve draws to a close, there is one final tradition the Queen still does every year. The Queen still, to this day, makes Christmas stockings for her children out of her old stockings, filled with an orange, an apple, a handful of nuts, some coins, and a present. It could be a tie or a head scarf or something. You know, she really makes sure that everybody wakes up on Christmas morning and finds a stocking with fruit and lovely trinkets in.

And she likes to deliver those to the rooms of her children. So, every year, Charles, Andrew, Edward, and Anne still get a Christmas stocking from their mother. Today is a very special day. As dawn breaks over Sandringham on Christmas Day, the Queen is up early, ready to give out presents to her favorite guests.

The corgis get presents on Christmas morning. Every year I would wrap toys and bones and chocolate drops in loosely wrapped presents so that little corgi claws could open them and the Queen had great fun in dishing them out. We did have nine corgis in my day and it was rather a a noise coming out of her bedroom on Christmas morning.

But when you’re under the monarch’s roof for Christmas, lazing around in your pants is not an option. I think if you’re the guest of the Queen at Sandringham on Christmas Day, you do exactly what the house rules tell you to do and you follow the plan. You can’t go off piste. You can’t just go for a walk when you want to.

You have to wait for the opportunity to do that. I’d quite like a royal affair where it’s just absolutely, you know, 9:00 you’re there, 10:00 you’re in the car, 10:10 wave at the gourmless people outside the church, 11:00 you’re back there, 50-minute lunch, 4:00 go out and shoot some peasants. pheasants Most of us think that Christmas should be like jazz. It’s improvised.

It’s free form. You can have a champagne of your breakfast. You can have lunch at 9:00 p.m. But for the royals, everything is planned like a military operation. And the Queen likes it like that. She doesn’t like uh to waste time. She likes her time to be filled and then move on to something else. Tradition dictates every part of the day for the royals from when they wake up to when they can go to bed and even who gets to come down for breakfast.

The royal women are allowed to take their breakfast in their rooms. That’s a a coffee and a croissant and a continental breakfast and then breakfast is served downstairs for the gentlemen and that is a a full cooked breakfast. Breakfast is served on the sideboard and you help yourself and seat yourself.

It’s a self-service situation. No one’s ever waited on at breakfast. And while Sandringham staff are preparing for the meal of the year, the royals on Christmas Day have some important decisions to make. What to wear and when. You get up in one thing. Then you have to change to go to church. You might change then for lunch.

You might then change to go for walk in the afternoon. And then you will change again for dinner. It can be quite exhausting. And it was it was one of the the unbending rituals that both Princess Diana and the Duchess of York found quite hard to adjust to. By 11:00 a.m. the whole family have taken the short walk to the 16th century church on the estate for the morning service.

Except the Queen who takes the car. Attending church on Christmas Day was something that Prince Albert felt was hugely important. The Queen has only missed it twice in 65 years. Thwarted by a royal tour and the common cold. The Queen is very religious. So, Christmas Day is very important to her and she attends two services and of course the public get to see her at the at the 11:00 service at Sandringham on Christmas Day.

Affection from well-wishers draws a smile from the Queen at Sandringham. The Christmas morning service, traditionally a family affair, this year attended by the newest royal couple. Outside the church, anyone can catch a glimpse of the royals. But the only people getting inside are local parishioners who have been vetted in advance.

And there are a lot of shall we say strange people, bored people who are just standing there on Christmas Day on their own Christmas Day waving at another family, which is what they’re doing. And unless like Philip, you are nearly a hundred, the Christmas service is non-negotiable. All the royals are meant to go to church at 11:00.

Um the Queen is a stickler for that, that they go to church. Used to be very cross with Princess Margaret for not going to church on Christmas Day. Sometimes she didn’t. But that is the rule. After the service, the royals are back at Sandringham. The main event, Christmas lunch, runs to a tight schedule, starting at exactly 1:15 for just 50 minutes in the red drawing room, which is in fact green.

The dining table seats 22, so you’ve got to have a lot of food to feed feed 22 people, although none of them eat a lot. There was a lot of pressure uh preparing Christmas Day. I mean, it was Christmas Day after all, and we don’t even want to mess up our own Christmas Day, let alone the royal family’s Christmas Day.

We worked some long hours. We’d start first thing in the morning, sometimes 6:00 in the morning, sometimes earlier. I mean, we met Santa Claus as he was leaving. I mean, it was that early we started work. Christmas dinner fit for a queen. Sounds like it would be a gastronomic affair. I would assume they would have one of those things where they squeeze a bantam into a duck into a chicken into a stag into a bear into an elephant and cook that.

But no, I think they just have turkey. Christmas lunch is pretty much the sort of thing that you and I would eat for Christmas. Turkey, uh roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, turnips, parsnips, uh cranberry sauce. You would expect something more extravagant. Surely they’ve got like neck of swan or something like that, you know, something a bit exotic.

Trying to get new dishes on the menu was really tough. Uh when you were eating with the Queen, you had the same menu, and if you didn’t like it, you pushed it around the plate. Uh you didn’t request a different menu. But don’t be fooled. Whilst it might sound like your standard turkey dinner, for the royals, only the best will do.

The local butcher in Dersingham uh would arrive with a turkey. I think he almost reared this turkey, and it was his favorite pet or something, and it was absolutely perfect. The royal chefs cook three turkeys for the royal dining room, one for the children in the nursery, and many more for the staff.

That’s a lot of turkey. The head chef would go in and then carve at the table, and at the end, Her Majesty would allow uh the head chef to have a glass of whiskey, and just a toast to the chef. The royals will be tucking into the same dessert as many of us, but it takes the whole year to make a pudding fit for royalty.

These are not Christmas puddings off the shelf. These are handmade by the royal chefs a year in advance, so they have time to soak and really absorb all of the brandy and that wonderful flavor that makes a Christmas pudding so special. And by all accounts, the Queen’s Christmas puddings are very special and are very meaningful to the royal household.

The lights are dimmed, and the palace steward will process around the table with a flaming Christmas pudding. It’s one of many traditions which happen during food service. For instance, the piper always pipes at the end of a meal around the table. Yes, slightly different to our lunch, then. The Queen um actually had a little notepad at the side on the table, and if she had a a comment or anything, let’s leave it as a comment.

Uh Uh, she would write that in the book, and then of course that got sent back to the kitchen. The lunch routine works the same every year. And when it comes to who the Queen is stuck next to, she’s not leaving it to chance. Queen decides where everybody sits around the table, who sits on her right and who sits on her left.

She not only comes in to inspect the table once it’s been laid, she also makes sure that she’s happy with the seating plan which usually sees her at one end of the table with the Duke of Edinburgh at the other. She gets to put Philip right at the end of the table and probably pulls up a seat next to her with a doggy.

But even on Christmas day, strict royal etiquette still stands. No one picks up their knife and fork and starts eating until the Queen does. You wait for her to take the lead. No one leaves the table and until the Queen does. You really are completely led by Her Majesty. The one thing she doesn’t lead though is the conversation.

Someone is going to say something. And you know, I can imagine them sitting there and then somebody says, “I wonder what Meghan got for Christmas.” Meghan? Why did you bring up Meghan for? >> [cheering] >> It’s like an episode of the Kardashians in there. But that is the point of Christmas, isn’t it really? Cuz I mean really families are things you avoid all year and then you all get together at Christmas to just scream at each other and decide you won’t see each other for another year.

So, to keep things friendly, conversation is restricted around the Queen. When it comes to table talk, politics would be firmly off the menu and any family rivalry, fall outs, feuds, absolutely no go. Everyone has a big sunny smile on their face because that’s what the Queen wants to see. You can hear the Queen saying, “Oh, really? Do you think so? Oh, I am surprised.

” At Christmas lunch, they make polite conversation, which doesn’t really bridge gaps of Megxit or the affairs of Prince Andrew. It was a family atmosphere when they were all in there. It wasn’t very formal state banquet sort of thing. And you could hear the laughter in the dining room. They were just happy time.

They might be a little bit more upright, but by and large, they do those things that we all do on Christmas Day. They eat, they drink, uh they they swap happy memories and stories. They’re surrounded by their family. And the royal treatment isn’t just reserved for the family. The royal family would have their lunch, but we had our lunch, too, in the staff dining room.

And there was no expense spared. There was all the turkey and the trimmings and the puddings, and we even had champagne in there. The Queen really wanted her staff to have as good a Christmas as she had. After the endless formalities and politics of lunch are out of the way, it’s feet up, ready for Grandma’s speech. There is this hurry to get Christmas lunch out the way.

Everyone has to be fed and served and and all in time for the Queen’s speech at 3:00, which um the entire family are expected to be with the monarch, gathered around the television. The Queen’s speech is filmed in a variety of locations, usually Buckingham Palace. The Queen became the first monarch to actually televise that speech, um which she largely writes herself.

I mean, often it is it is with a little bit of input from her courtiers, but these are very much the Queen’s thoughts and reflections on that year. As for the family, well, they always watch it in silence. Um they don’t interrupt. There are no sort of hear, hears or well said, but afterwards they will um compliment her for it. She’s pretty amazing.

Uh she does it in one take, albeit with an auto-cue, but she is the consummate professional. It’s often what’s next to the Queen that gets everyone talking. The speech is one of the rare times that we actually get to see in one of the Queen’s private rooms, and of course, what’s on her desk is always of of huge interest and is carefully analyzed by by the media.

Last year there was a big fuss because there were no pictures of Prince Harry or Meghan or indeed baby Archie on the Queen’s desk. And they are supposed to have regarded this as a huge slight, which was utter rubbish. The photographs were purely of those members of the family who will one day sit on the throne.

Nobody else. >> >> Christmas at Sandringham is drowning in royal tradition from bagpipes at lunch to the Queen watching herself on the telly. But the royals sure know how to party. The Queen loves her Christmas crackers. They’re always on the table at Christmas. Now, there’s a secret because she chooses the jokes and the contents of every cracker.

They’re really posh little things. Can’t be very big, I know. But they won’t be like a little top thing that goes like that. Royal Christmas crackers are bespoke. They are filled with really interesting and desirable items. Scarves, gorgeous cufflinks. I’m absolutely convinced that the Queen wears a paper crown that comes with the crackers.

I think I think definitely. I can see them all wearing it and them all howling with laughter. And then at about 8:00 in the evening, she goes, “Right, enough’s enough.” and takes off the paper crown and puts on her old, you know, a comfy comfy gold one. The Queen never wears a paper crown. She feels that would sort of belittle, if you like, uh her role as monarch.

Other members of the family do, of course. The Queen can’t get enough of Christmas cracker jokes. So, what kinds of jokes set her off? What does Santa suffer from when he gets stuck down a chimney? Claustrophobia. No, you’re welcome. What do the royal family play at Christmas instead of musical chairs? Game of Thrones. After all the formalities have been taken care of, the royal family liven up the day with some party games.

The royals love to play games and I think Christmas is one of the few times that they all come together and there is enough time to to sit and play games. The Queen takes the day off and she doesn’t work. So, it is the only non-working day in the whole of the royal calendar. They get into what we call scruff order.

They’re not going to do it in ties. They’re not going to do it in suits. Scruff order is open-neck shirt, maybe a jersey because it’s cold, and a pair of jeans or cords or something like that. They know how to how to relax. They know how to laugh and they know how to enjoy themselves. The Queen loves parlor games.

Charades is a personal favorite of hers. She’s very good at it. She absolutely insists on playing it over Christmas. She is competitive. She has a reputation for being very good at at doing impressions, at least in her younger days. She was good at doing impressions of her prime ministers. Her Mrs. Thatcher was apparently a a good one to see.

What the Queen will not do is allow people to play Monopoly. Because that used to bring out the worst features of certain members of her family who were so keen to win that they would, on one occasion, one of them actually threw board across the room. >> >> The Queen brought an end to Monopoly. If it’s a chat with granny thereafter, bridge is the way to her heart.

The best way of getting the Queen’s attention is when the card table is set out after dinner, the Queen loves to play a hand of bridge. That’s your opportunity to go and take a seat and play with Her Majesty. Then you can have a one-on-one conversation. It’s probably just a brief summary of what they’ve done that year, you know, embarrassed myself nationally, ran away, still unemployed, you know, swore at people in a car, that kind of stuff.

I imagine that those bridge games are when majority of the years scheming, plotting, and writing hate mail to Harry and Meghan in LA actually happens. >> >> Like us regular folk, the royals are even known to put their feet up and watch a film together in the evening in the ballroom. They have a a cinema at Sandringham and the royal family get all the latest releases, >> >> probably before they’re being shown in in theaters.

I know one of the things the royals and I have in common is I have a gentleman come into my ballroom uh and projects uh a film of my choice onto the back wall. And my back wall has a selection of uh hunting utensils and weapons, as do the royals. So, it’s nice to know that they do stuff that, you know, normal people do as well.

They all like to sit down together and watch an an action film or a weepy, um, something which doesn’t have too much bad language. Even after the fun and games are over, no one can go to bed until the Queen does. Luckily, at 94, she’s unlikely to keep anyone up. Once the Queen retires for the night, the rest of the family can relax.

But with all the royal rules and traditions, does the Sandringham Christmas ever get too much? I think the royals probably go there with their own personal staff including like sort of a clutch of look-alikes. And so, it’s just the look-alikes wandering around Sandringham having conversations while the royals all just hide in their rooms and watch Netflix.

I don’t think they actually want to talk to each other. I can imagine that as joyful and wonderful as it undoubtedly is, there will probably be moments of of stress and and tension for members of the royal family. After all, they’re not in their own home and they are doing everything, understandably so, by the Queen’s book of a royal Christmas.

The days when the family would be together way into the new year are are long gone. Some go that very day, certainly on Boxing Day at the latest. For many new additions marrying into the royal family, operation Christmas has been testing. I imagine it must have been an incredible ordeal for for Meghan being introduced not just, uh, having to get used to a sort of foreign traditions, but then the whole obligations that come with with celebrating with with the royal family where everything has to be, you know, just so. She would have been very

worried about, I’m sure, about putting a foot wrong. Diana uh, did not like Christmas with the Windsors. She was very keen to disappear into her room as much as she could. Once the Queen and the Royals had left the dining room, Princess Diana just liked to come in for a chat and just sort of walk around the kitchen and see what was going on.

Princess Diana used to say to me, “By the end of a Christmas visit at Sandringham, I was crawling the walls. Couldn’t wait to escape.” At the same time, you had the Duchess of York banished to a cottage on this day. She wasn’t welcome to the big house because of her marital difficulties. I mean, those things are probably not mentioned by the Royals, but it must have clouded those particular Christmases.

The Christmas routine may seem indestructible, but it turns out there is one spanner in the royal works that not even the Queen can get around. >> This may well be the Queen’s first Christmas at Windsor and since 1988. And this may well be a more slimmed-down Christmas than the one that the Queen is used to.

And in that respect, the royal family are in the same boat as everyone else. I think Prince Andrew will go. I think Prince Edward will go. And Philip, of course, will be there. So, she won’t be entirely alone. She can stay in bed. She can play with the doggies. She can do all the important stuff on Zoom. I think a Christmas at home on her own or with Philip, which is the same as being on your own, would be much more enjoyable.

A royal Christmas at Sandringham is simply like no other. 200 staff, endless turkeys, a black-tie dinner, five outfit changes, and a Christmas Day without any presents. From the feasting and to to the to the venue where it all takes place, and the sheer scale of a royal Christmas is probably actually quite hard for most of us to imagine.

I mean, what other household makes 1,200 mince pies to prepare for Christmas? The fact that they’re in a castle, the fact that they go to church in Rolls-Royces, the fact that they have four costume changes, tradition is definitely at the heart of the royal Christmas because the whole point of the royal family is tradition.

I used to think the whole institution of the royal family and the traditions and the kind of frozen in timelessness of them was really weird, but actually, having had the year we’ve had, I think it’s just what we need. I kind of it’s incredibly comforting this year, weirdly.