Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE ROYAL FAMILY
The popularity of the
royal family
to foreign tourists never seems to flag, but at home it has
always waxed and waned. The Queen herself, in one of her few memorable Christmas Day
speeches, accurately described 1992 as her
annus horibilis
(or “One's Bum Year” as the
Sun
put it). That was the year that saw the marriage break-ups of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew,
the divorce of Princess Anne, and ended with the fire at Windsor Castle. The royals decided to
raise some of the money by opening Buckingham Palace to the public for the first time (and
by cranking up the admission charges on all the royal residences).
To try and deflect some of the bad publicity from that year, the Queen agreed to reduce the
number of royals paid out of the state coffers, and, for the first time in her life, pay
taxes
on her
personal fortune. The death of Princess Diana in 1997 was a low point for the royals, but their
ratings have improved steadily since the new millennium, partly because the family have got
much better at PR. E
ciencies and cost-cutting have also taken place, though public subsidy
is still considerable, with around £30 million handed over each year in the Sovereign Grant and
millions more spent on
luxuries
such as the Royal Squadron (for air travel) and the Royal Train.
Boosted by the hysteria around the
wedding
of Prince William and Kate Middleton (not to
mention the arrival of a new heir to the throne), and the Queen's
Diamond Jubilee
(which
coincided with the 2012 Olympics), the Windsors are currently riding high on a wave of good
publicity at home. Modernizing continues apace, with female heirs to the throne no longer
passed over in preference of younger males, and marriage to a Roman Catholic no longer an
issue, although the sovereign still has to be a full-blooded Protestant. However, with none of
the mainstream political parties advocating scrapping the monarchy, the royal soap opera
looks safe to run for many years to come.
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Pall Mall
Running west from Trafalgar Square to St James's Palace, the wide thoroughfare of
Pall
Mall
is renowned for its gentlemen's clubs, whose discreet Italianate and Neoclassical
facades, fronted by cast-iron torches, still punctuate the street. It gets its bizarre name
from the game of
pallo a maglio
(ball to mallet) - something like modern croquet -
popularized by Charles II and played here and on The Mall. Crowds gathered here in
1807 when it became London's first gas-lit street - the original lampposts (erected to
reduce the opportunities for crime and prostitution) are still standing.
Lower Regent Street
Lower Regent Street
, a quarter of the way down Pall Mall, was the first stage in John
Nash's ambitious plan to link the Prince Regent's magnificent Carlton House with
Regent's Park. Like so many of Nash's grandiose schemes, it never quite came to
fruition, as George IV, soon after ascending the throne, decided that Carlton House -
the most expensive palace ever to have been built in London - wasn't quite luxurious
enough, and had it pulled down. Its Corinthian columns now support the main
portico of the National Gallery.
Waterloo Place
Lower Regent Street opens into
Waterloo Place
, which Nash extended beyond Pall Mall
once Carlton House had been demolished. At the centre of the square stands the
Crimean
War Memorial
, fashioned from captured Russian cannons in 1861, and commemorating
the 2152 Foot Guards who died during the Crimean War. The horrors of that conflict
were witnessed by Florence Nightingale (see p.220), whose statue - along with that of
Sidney Herbert (Secretary at War at the time) - was added in 1914.
South of Pall Mall, Waterloo Place is flanked by St James's two grandest gentlemen's
clubs: the former
United Services Club
(now the Institute of Directors), to the east, and
the
Athenaeum
, to the west. Their almost identical Neoclassical designs are by Nash's
protégé Decimus Burton: the better-looking is the Athenaeum, its portico sporting a
garish gilded statue of the goddess Athena and, above, a Wedgwood-type frieze inspired
