Tom Quinn

In this lively and colourful history, royal expert TomQuinn goes behind palace doors to give a compelling glimpse of Britain’sroyals, ancient and modern. From medieval times, when the Groom of the Stooloversaw the monarch’s lavatorial exploits, below-stairs staff have always had aunique insight into the lives of their royal masters. Through the eyes of serving and recently retired staff,we see how today’s royals live – including how the relationship between Meghanand Harry and William and Kate started with high hopes and descended intobitterness and anger. Now fully updated with a scandalous new chapterrevealing how the former Prince Andrew’s life has changed since being cast outby the royal family, Yes, Ma’am is the ultimate insight into what reallymakes the royal family tick – after all, who better to ask than their army ofservants and staff, past and present?

What really makes the British royal family tick? It?s a question that royal watchers have pondered for as long as there has been a royal family. And the answe? ell, surprisingly, it?s not the royal family?s devotion to duty, it?s not their wealth or their status, it?s not even their popularity (or notoriety!). No, what really makes the royal family tick is the huge body of servants and staff past and present who feed and clothe the royals, organise their days, polish their shoes, carry the deer and pheasants they shoot, and even put the toothpaste on their toothbrushes. If you want to find out who these servants are, what they do and why, in so many cases, they devote their whole lives to royal service, then this book is for you.Some servants became utterly indispensable to the royals for whom they worked ? Elizabeth II?s childhood nanny Bobo MacDonald, for example, was closer to the late Queen than anyone in her family, not excepting even her husband Prince Philip and her sister Princess Margaret.At the other end of the spectrum, some members of staff found their royal employers arrogant, overbearing, snobbish and even infantile. As one recent member of the Kensington Palace team put it: ?What you get with one or two members of the royal family is a public angel and a private devil! And only the staff see the private devil!?