So what can we learn from this peek through a royal keyhole — and the comforting message the photograph portrays?
What can we learn from this peek through a royal keyhole — and the comforting message the photograph portrays?
1. Let’s start with the telephone. It is a 1970s-style receiver, complete with the kink in the cord that was once common in every home in the land. There are similar phones dotted all over the castle’s private rooms. The Queen herself does not have to dial any numbers: when she picks the receiver up an operator connects her.
2. Corgi figurines dominate the picture. The breed have been part of the Queen’s life since her 18th birthday in 1944 when she received Susan, her first Pembroke corgi. For the next 60 years she bred her own until old age and fear about who would look after them when she no longer could, made her stop. The larger model is thought to be Royal Doulton china while below it are two silver miniatures on Welsh slate. It carries a small plaque suggesting it must have been a gift.
3. On top of the desk are two figures: one partly hidden is of a member of the Queen’s Guard. From the flash in the bearskin it appears to be a member of the Grenadiers, once Prince Philip’s regiment and now Prince Andrew’s. There is a drum on his back. Beside it is a smaller model of a soldier, possibly in Scottish uniform.
4. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace are a number of objets d’art. The most touching is the statuette to the far right: it is of the Queen herself as ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth aboard her first pony.
5. Its companion piece is of a rearing stallion complete with jockey. Between the two horses are two highly decorative blue urns coated with gold gilt.
6. The urns stand either side of a magnificently ornate golden mantel clock. The Queen has a collection of 800 timepieces.
7. To the left of the rearing horse is an impressive brass light fashioned from a cherub holding up twin candle lights.
8. Behind the phone is thought to be an antique Wedgwood set of a bowl and plate in the shape of a cabbage leaf.
9. The desk. The Queen rarely works from this desk and it is mainly used to display items. Just behind the china corgi, a silver picture frame is visible. It contains a miniature of the Queen Mother, then Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. It was a gift to her husband-to-be , the future King George VI, from his mother in law.
10. Over the Queen’s left shoulder, partly obscured, we see the Queen is not so different from us, with her CD carousel. Apparently she has a TV in that corner too.
11. In the foreground is a three-seat sofa upholstered in a floral pattern. She was pictured sitting on it five years ago when she received the New Zealand premier.
The picture reveals the Queen’s private quarters to be homely, intimate and, at a time of crisis, so very comforting.