Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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29 July 2014

See Prince Charles' caravan

Whilst not anti-royalist, your author has just never really been that interested in the paraphernalia of monarchy, but last week the mystery of what lies behind that wall in Belgravia finally got too much and so it was that he tramped off to Buckingham Palace to see the Royal Childhood exhibition and walk the various corridors and rooms around it.


The exhibition itself was both interesting and thought-provoking, very much in the same way as Macaulay Culkin's 1994 film Richie Rich helping us to understand what sort of toys you can have if you are born into extreme privilege. We learn that, for her 6th birthday, the Queen received a tiny but very real cottage - Y Bwthyn Bach - in the grounds of the Royal Lodge at Windsor, and filled it with replicas of kitchenwares and home appliances like the ones that she would never have to use, that Prince Charles and Princess Anne were given a fully functional miniature caravan at about the same age, whilst a seven year old Prince Andrew had a scaled down version of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5.

Of course there are other many normal items on show, such as a simple blanket given to Prince George by the Obamas, a chart with pencil markings of the heights of the children of King George V, and many dolls, chairs and various outfits. Tellingly most of the most lavish items on show were gifts from manufacturers or foreign heads of state rather than expensive personal purchases, but the exhibition, and the walks through endless opulent corridors and empty rooms around them which were never designed to be used by the Royals as part of their daily lives, just helps to underline how different their lives are from ours, and how we could probably never understand them, just as they couldn't understand ours. It's fascinating.

For more, see http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/royal-childhood

1 comment:

  1. Another example of how much London has to offer both local people and visitors. Have to admit, I wasn't even aware of this exhibition. Too many of us undervalue what the Royal Family has to offer London. http://bloominglondon.blogspot.com

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