Season 5 of HELLO!’s popular podcast, A Right Royal Podcast, is back, and hosts Andrea Caamano and Emily Nash are joined by none other than Courtiers author Valentine Low, who has published a new book, Power and the Palace. In it, the former The Times royal correspondent uncovers many unknown details about the royal family and their relationship with the government, including how Queen Camilla fought off an attempted sexual assault on a tube as a teenager, that the late Queen was a “Remainer,” and much more. In the new episode, Val also talks about the famous royal red boxes — what they really contain, the different sizes, and how the monarch’s secretary decides what goes in and what stays out.
Speaking to Andrea and Emily, Val explained: “The red box is government papers to a large extent, but not just government papers, papers from a variety of sources. People think that the government packs up a red box and sends it over the palace. No, lots of papers come in lots of boxes to the palace every day, and then it’s the private secretary’s job to sort out what the Queen or King, whoever it is, needs to see.”
“The Queen read everything she should,” he added. “Charles wants to read everything he should and a lot more. A red box is sent up in the evening; they also go up in the morning with a sort of wicker tray of papers, and private secretaries — you can find them on the floor of their office on their knees, with papers spread out all over the floor — working out which order to put these various papers into the wicker tray to take them up.”
Regarding how the monarch receives “tricky” family news in the red box, Val reveals there is a “knack” to how the secretaries position the news within the box to ensure that, when read, it’s received in a calmer way. Listen to the episode above to find out what the knack was.In the episode, he also opens up about how he reacted when he was told about Queen Camilla’s attempted assault and why he rushed home, as well as what really happened to the late Queen’s plates at Balmoral after she finished washing them herself.
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