Buckingham Palace looks grandly bland on the outside but contains all kinds of surprises. More like a complex or a village than a building, it features a chapel, a post office, a swimming pool, a staff cafeteria, a doctor's surgery and a cinema. You could call the place the Queen’s very own Little London. There, Her Highness hosts banquets and garden parties among other upmarket events. With the royal wedding coming up, learn the eccentric secrets of her domain.
1. The Palace imposes no official dress code. But nobody visits in scraggy raggedy jeans, either. Most men invited to Buckingham Palace in the day wear service uniform or lounge suits. In the evening, depending on the formality level, male visitors wear a black or white tie. If the occasion is 'white tie', women wear tiaras.
2. One ritual that most tourists miss is the obsessive-compulsive daily 'dragging' of the forecourt gravel. The gravel is cleaned and combed with mechanical equipment first thing daily – even on Christmas Day. Later in the day, two more inspections happen, just in case there is a hint of rubbish. No wonder the grounds look immaculate.
3. The site where Buckingham Palace stands originally served as a mulberry garden planted by King James I, the bookish king who reigned between 1603 and 1625. King James reared silkworms at the palace. Alas, James chose the wrong kind of mulberry bush and his efforts failed.
4. Despite its name, Buckingham Palace was originally just an aristocrat’s pad. Its name comes from an eighteenth-century Tory politician: John Sheffield, 3rd Earl of Mulgrave and Marquess of Normanby, who was made Duke of Buckingham in 1703. The duke built what he called Buckingham House for himself as a swank London hangout.
5. The virtuoso architect John Nash transformed Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace in the 1820s. The first monarch to use Nash’s creation as an official home was Queen Victoria, who moved there in 1837. Victoria’s royal predecessor, William IV, ‘slummed it’, as the British say – he lived at the comparatively common Clarence House on The Mall.
6. Buckingham Palace is more radical, design-wise, than you might think. Some rooms have a Chinese theme. Some furniture and décor were borrowed from the Prince Regent's outrageous oriental-style Brighton Pavilion. It was later sold by Queen Victoria to fund building work at Buckingham Palace. Talk about keeping it in the family.
7. The only monarch to be born and die at Buckingham Palace was the peacemaking chain smoker Edward VII, who lived from 1841 to 1910. You could say that Edward needed to get out more, but he would have struggled to find anywhere else so central and splashy. If you live in the Palace, you have your finger on London’s humming pulse.
8. Ever wondered why the palace wasn’t bombed in the Second World War? Actually, it was. Heavily. The palace took no less than nine direct hits. Several times, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth narrowly dodged being killed. You wonder why they weren’t moved somewhere less obvious than Buckingham Palace.
9. The wartime bombing claimed at least one life: that of PC Steve Robertson, a policeman on duty at the Palace. PC Steve Robertson was struck by flying debris on 8 March 1941 when the Palace’s north side was demolished. A plaque in the garden marks his memory.
10. If your mobile phone battery runs out and you lose track of time inside Buckingham Palace, relax. The landmark houses over 350 clocks and watches: one of the largest collections of working clocks anywhere. Two full-time professional clock watchers wind them up every week to keep them nicely ticking over.
Something you do know about Buckingham Palace: On April 28, 2011, Kate Middleton will be driven from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey to get hitched to Prince William, after which she will return to the palace in a horse-drawn carriage. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners are expected to fill the streets to watch the royal procession, and Hotels in London expected to fill up fast.
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