Drinking Champagne with the Queen at Christmas
Champagne with the Queen at Christmas.
We are drinking champagne in Buckingham Palace surrounded by the sweet resin smell of the many pine trees taken from the Queen’s Estates glistening with lights and hung with miniatures of the Imperial Crown and the Imperial State Coach. The Queen, serene as ever, smiles in that warm grand-motherly manner she has when putting people at their ease. Her corgis Holly and Willow and dorgis, Vulcan and Candy, are at her feet. She’s on the wall of course, rather than in the flesh, but that’s a detail. Bling is everywhere. Tasteful Bling. British Royal rather than Russian Knightsbridge. The chairs in this anti-room seem to be burnished gold. The carpet is lush and deep red. In a corner, unlit, is a Chinese vase which Fiona Bruce would drool over in an Antiques Roadshow, yet is unnoticed and unremarked upon. As we wait for Michael our guide to begin, eyes swim across Corinthian pillars, gilded oak leaves, and beautiful marbled young bodies, with their perfectly formed tits and god-like torsos.
I’ve come prepared to be underwhelmed. The ostentation of Palaces, of Great Houses and large religious buildings leave me unattractively chippy and leaning too far left of my centre. Ridiculous amounts of money, ego, exploitation and abuses of power leave me cynical and obtuse, unable to see great craftsmanship through the smoke of politics. It has taken me nearly 60 years to even want to visit the Palace, let alone buy an expensive ticket and join the world crowds.
The seduction on this private tour (£86 profits to the Royal Heritage Fund) begins straight away. We are attended by eight staff who make everything as smooth and as fabulous as any human interaction can be. Toilets are lavatories, queues are short, coats and bags are smoothly taken and lanyards issued.
Michael leads us up shallow-stepped stairs. The group of 30 have become silent, awed by the theatre of the place. On the landing, we are watched by the Royal Line on the walls, as well as by Jackie and Peter who accompany Michael to ensure we don't help ourselves to any little knick-knack, and then double doors to the state rooms open and gold-gilt becomes beautiful. I feel cynicism melting like candle wax. Michael patters on, pointing out one priceless, jaw-dropping treasure after another. The scale of the place is thrilling. It is a fantasy land. I expect the toy soldiers to become real, the Christmas tree to grow before my eyes. Instead, one of the 350 clocks in the Palace chimes the sweetest of notes. All thoughts of the poor eighteenth century tax payer being fleeced by a greedy king to pay for all of this are forgotten as the very best of human creativity makes to grab my artistic soul. Supreme achievement costs money. Only Kings have it to this degree - or Russian oligarchs. Kings have more style and have had it for longer.
There are mirrors everywhere, not a smear or grease stain upon them. Chandeliers drip lead lights rich with the full colour spectrum. There are portraits justifying lineage and accession, and the industrial quantities of Sèvres porcelain is the greatest collection in the world. The fantasy that we are in the company of a higher order of being is most marked in the throne room where the seats on which Royal bottoms sit are red, comfortable and raised on a dais under a proscenium arch, their cyphers sewn in gold. In the picture gallery, Vermeers, Steens, Caravaggios, Rubens, Rembrandts, Claudes and other greats hang on silk lined walls. The National Gallery has nothing on this. It is hard to know where to look, or what to look at. Each glance brings another familiar friend, another treasure, more often seen on a biscuit tin or jigsaw puzzle.
We are gently led - nothing is rushed although we keep strictly to the 90 minute timings - to the ballroom, the largest room in England, where the state banquets, investitures, and ceremonies of state are held. Here the noble, the rich and powerful, the brilliant and selfless along with the murderous have all stood to be honoured and their deeds glorified. Queen Victoria loved this room. It was where she danced and danced until her husband died and she never danced again.
In a palace choked with treasures, some purloined, many bought, there are also the spoils of war. The table of the Great Commanders is one such piece. Commissioned by Napoleon and six years in the making, it is made entirely of porcelain at Sèvres and shows the world’s greatest generals of antiquity - Africanus Scippius, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar among others. I am by now rather drunk with the exceptionally beautiful, but this piece is so fabulous, so extraordinary in terms of its ingenuity and execution that if mankind had to produce but one piece to show the gods the skills that they had learnt and their time on earth had not been wasted, this would pass the test.
There are other rooms, but by now I am satiated. My ticket allows me to return within a year for free and I will pay more attention to them then, for return I will.
We find ourselves back at the beginning, being offered champagne as if we weren’t drunk enough already with art, fantasy and by the sheer spectacle that lies behind ‘the most famous facade in the world’.
So why are there no images of beautiful Sèvres vases or Commander tables and stunning state rooms? No photos inside the palace. Whatsoever. Not even a sneaky one. So here is gilt and ornament outside the palace gates, photographed under the watchful eye of a policeman.