Inside The Royal Residence Empire Of The British Royal Family

The British royal family own a lot of properties. With an institution that's a thousand years old and owns property that they've been owning for a thousand years, you can imagine there are quite a few of them. They're all over the country. Some are historic seats of power used today for their official duties. I think we have always associated Buckingham Palace as Royal HQ. Others are private homes for holidays. It became really a place where they could retreat, where they could relax away from the glare of attention in London. But keeping these historic buildings working and running smoothly takes a small army. It's got housekeepers, butlers, violets, chauffeurs, but there's also office staff. So there's quite a few of us. This is a royal guide to property. The British royal family, a dynasty spanning over a thousand years, is today one of the most iconic institutions in the world. Their ancestral homes are now impressive symbols of their reign, such as the imposing Tower of London or Hampton Court Palace. Today, the royals aren't spoilt for choice as to where to live. With over 20 official residences across the four nations, from their working homes to the country escapes dotted throughout the UK. They oversee a property empire spanning over 100,000 hectares, almost as big as Greater London. And it's in London that the seat of British monarchy resides and has done since 1016. This was set in stone in 1078, when William the Conqueror built a palace here to rule from, the Tower of London. Today, monarchy HQ is a little further down the River Thames at Buckingham Palace. A monarch has resided at Buckingham Palace since 1837. So I think it is the most iconic of royal residences. It is also what we associate with, I suppose, the royal family's headquarters. In the 300 years prior to 1837, British kings and queens ruled from St. James's Palace, a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace. Built on order of Henry VIII in the 1530s, it is still the official seat of the monarchy. When an ambassador comes to England, they are accredited to the court of St. James's, not to the court of Buckingham Palace. And when a monarch dies, their successor is proclaimed monarch at St. James's. In 1761, George III bought the neighbouring Buckingham House, as it was known then for his wife, Queen Charlotte. It was originally a house, but it was added to by various monarchs, in particular George IV, who spent an enormous sum of money extending it and doing it up. In the 1820s, he hired architect John Nash to turn the house into a palace. Nash added two new wings, creating a U-shaped building with a huge courtyard. George IV was a sort of megalomaniac builder. He never lived in it, it was never finished for him, it wasn't finished for his brother. And it was actually Queen Victoria who was the first person to move into Buckingham Palace and use it as the official residence of the sovereign. Fifteen years after George IV's death, Queen Victoria requested yet more space in which to host dignitaries. A further wing was added, enclosing the courtyard. Then, in the early 20th century, the front was refaced and the balcony added, site of family gatherings and newlyweds' kisses. Buckingham Palace is a huge building with 775 rooms. Of course, not all of these are rooms that are used by the Queen, many of them are offices. Today, the monarchy is run from here and it's where the Queen tends to her daily duties, including a weekly meeting with her Prime Minister, held in her private apartments. But the most well-known part of the palace are the 19 state rooms, situated in the oldest part of the site at the back of the building. This is where the Queen receives dignitaries. You've got this incredible suite of very, very grand rooms with wonderfully lush interiors, sort of 1820s, 1830s, but filled with 18th century French furniture. The final room, and this is the room which has a great piece of theatre in it, is the white drawing room, where there's a rather lovely picture of an ethereal Queen Alexandra. The mirrors and the panels contain a secret door, so there's a wonderful moment during the diplomatic reception when the Queen emerges in all of her finery through a secret door. It's really quite something to see it in action, and it leads from the private apartments to the, if you like, the state apartments. It's quite an entrance. It's what you expect of a British monarch, isn't it, to make an entrance. And if the entrance doesn't impress, there are always the state banquets with which to dazzle the guests. A state banquet is an opportunity to get out the finest china, and possibly Queen Victoria's china, the gold cutlery, the cut crystal, I mean the absolute best of what the palace houses. And this is because a state visit is incredibly important. I mean, the Queen as head of state has a very important role as a soft power diplomat. Reserved for visiting heads of state, this is the grandest work event on the Buckingham Palace calendar. Taking over a year to plan and five days to set up, a state banquet can cater for 150 guests, and there is plenty of protocol to follow. It begins with laying the table. The first step is to get the charger. This is quite a kind of traditional thing. I mean, a lot of people today will use place mats. And then my little trick is to use the top part of my thumb, the knuckle to the tip, and place it down like that, round about an inch. And that's kind of where I want it from the edge of the table. Once the charger is perfectly positioned, it's time to add the cutlery. Cheese knives, teaspoons, pudding forks. It can be a mind-filled understanding the protocols. The rule, if you like, is normally to work on the outside and work your way in. So obviously you've got your teaspoon there, so you start with your teaspoon. Then the next course is the large knife and fork. Then you've got the pudding spoon and fork, and then you've got the cheese knife on the inside. And there seem to be just as many glasses. Here we've got our first glass, which will be for the white wine. I normally set this glass to the right of the blade of the main course knife, so it just sits there like that. The next glass is going to be the red wine, and I'm going to place that to the left of the white wine. And lastly, the water glass. So I've kind of created a little triangle. If there's any other glasses, say you were having a champagne, then you'd have that glass behind here to make a diamond formation. And then if you had a port, then the port glass would then sit behind the champagne glass. So you can end up with quite a few glasses, which can be a bit of a minefield. And if you're not sure, look at what the host is doing. The queen will keep the right. In fact, it's best to keep your eye on the queen throughout. Her house, her rules. The queen is very much at the heart of a state banquet. So as you would imagine, nobody would start eating until she starts eating. But equally, when she stops eating, everybody else has to stop eating. So it's a very precise occasion where you can imagine everybody kind of looking out the corner of their eye to see what the queen's doing. You look at seating arrangements for state banquets, generally might be one or two exceptions. It's pretty much boy, girl, boy, girl. The queen will speak to the person on her right first, which is always the guest of honor. And then she will speak to the person on her left, and people follow suit then. That said, even state banquets or state dinners sometimes become more relaxed than maybe they were at the start of the queen's reign. But the key is that you do speak to this person as much as you speak to this person. Even if this person here is fascinating and the person on your left is completely dull, the idea is that you share the conversation. As the host, the queen is known to want everything to be perfect, even going so far as to inspect the table layout before each dinner. Behind the scenes, her household makes sure everything goes to plan. But some things are even beyond the palace staff, as former royal chef Des Sweeney remembers. I remember one function, we were waiting for salmon to arrive. It was coming from the River Dee in Balmoral. So it was on the menu, so it was like poached salmon from the River Dee, Balmoral. So that's what we had to use. It was on the train coming from Scotland, and there were 16 chefs waiting for this salmon to arrive. It got delayed. Finally, it made it to London King's Cross. But then... It was like a police escort from King's Cross. We had a chain thing going on. There's a few chefs in the hallway prepping it, a couple in the kitchen cooking it, and a couple plating it. So it was tight. It was very tight. Everybody got fed on time. It all went, and nobody knows until now. Whilst Buckingham Palace is the main residence of the Queen, the heirs to the throne live close by. Prince Charles lives across the road in Clarence House, just like his mother did before she became monarch. Prince William is a short jog across Hyde Park, in apartment 1A of Kensington Palace. Prince William has a particular fondness for Kensington Palace, as that was where he grew up and lived with his mother, Princess Diana. So it has great personal significance for him. Obviously, as senior royals, they need to have a London home, because so much happens in London, and it's the perfect location. But after a busy week in the big smoke, the royals like to escape to the country for some R&R, and they have a fair few weekend pads to choose from. The Queen has six homes, and if you're wondering which one she's in at any one time, look for the flag. If the royal standard has been hoisted, Her Majesty's home. If the Union Jack is flying, she's somewhere else. As well as Buckingham Palace, two other buildings act as official residences. It's not an often mentioned fact, but of course, the Queen wears two crowns, the Crown of England and the Crown of Scotland, and the Palace of Holyrood House, originally just outside Edinburgh, but now very much in Edinburgh, is the Queen's official seat in Scotland. She goes there every year, very keen on it. And of course, in Northern Ireland, you have Hillsborough Castle, which has actually recently been beautifully restored, which is the Queen's sort of official residence there. But for a weekend getaway, she has a country retreat only 20 miles from central London, a home that is literally her castle. Of all the properties in the UK, Windsor Castle has the longest history for being a royal residence. It has a wonderful position, being high up. Obviously, when it was created, this was for defense purposes. But nowadays, where that's not really a concern, all it does is afford a fantastic view over the River Thames and the park beyond. Windsor Castle was built by William the Conqueror in 1070, and has been continually occupied by kings and queens ever since. An enduring symbol of the British monarchy. It has hosted major events, even state banquets, and with 1,000 rooms, it's hardly bijou, but it is seen as the Queen's weekend retreat, somewhere she feels much more comfortable and at home than in Buckingham Palace. She acquired an affection for it during the Second World War because the royal family were evacuated from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle in the early days of the war, and the Queen and Princess Margaret spent five years living there, and so I think it probably acquired quite a special place in her heart because of that. And since the pandemic hit, the Queen has once again made Windsor her primary home, living in her private apartments overlooking the East Terrace garden. Here, she had always enjoyed a simpler life, relatively speaking, away from the pomp and ceremony of the day job, and as former Palace chef Des Sweeney knows, that goes for her meals too. Most families only have six meals, they sort of jiggle around, and they were the same. Lunch was always quite light, a bit of poached chicken, often poached fish. And where possible, the food is local and seasonal, with produce often from her own estates across the country. The Queen was way ahead of Jamie Oliver and all the other chefs out there about the whole seasonality thing. We were never allowed to use fruit out of season. It was a big no-no, you know, why would we be using raspberries in January, strawberries in the season only? She's very strict on that, and we'd get notes about why we're using this in January, why we're not using this. I'd say long before anybody else got on to that theme. But the Queen does have some indulgences. For high tea in the afternoon, the Queen will enjoy a few finger sandwiches containing egg or cucumber or salmon, all very traditional, followed by her favourite, which would be something such as chocolate biscuit cake or a slice of treacle tart, which is a particular favourite of hers. The world's easiest pudding. This was the Queen Mother's favourite. So four ounces of white breadcrumbs, dry breadcrumbs, leave it for a day to dry out and then do it. One pan of golden syrup, just golden syrup. So you add one to the other. Two teaspoons of lemon juice, about that. Basically one of your five a day. Now you can make your own pastry cases and all that palaver, but is it worth it? You can buy these from local food markets. Let's hope Her Majesty never finds out. The sweet sticky mixture is then spooned into the cases. And that's it. With all due respect, they're old school, aren't they? This is a classic example. One of their dishes that has been passed down in generation, generation, loved by all. Let's not change it for the sake of changing it. It's good. We know it's good. It's always going to be good. That's what you do then, you pop those in the oven, 20 minutes, job done. The world's easiest dessert. Once it's cooked, place the tart on a plate and serve with sauce anglaise. That's fancy talk for custard. Add some raspberry coulis and voila. While the family meals might be simple, the setting is anything but. As a royal palace, Windsor Castle is home to some of the priceless Royal Art Collection. The Royal Collection is one of the greatest art collections in the world, and it's very unusual in European terms because the French Royal Art Collection, obviously at the Revolution, became the National Art Collection, and you find it in the Louvre. The Spanish Collection, you find it in the Prado. But in the UK, the Royal Collection is at Holyrood, it's at Hampton Court, it's at Buckingham Palace, it's at Windsor. As well as paintings by the likes of Holbein, Rubens and Bruegel, it contains precious ceramics, clocks, carpets, ornaments and furniture. All this treasure needs to be maintained by an army of specialist craftspeople. Gardeners, picture conservators, gilders, seamstresses, obviously me, upholsterer, cabinet makers, guys that wind the clocks up, and then you've got the specialist paper conservators that work in the library. Stephen Alley is a former royal upholsterer. He spent most of his time restoring and repairing the Queen's impressive collection of 18th and 19th century furniture, and got to know the Queen's personal likes and dislikes. We had a request from the Queen that one of the seats was too hard, so we brought it back to the workshops, took off all the upholstery, sort of loosened off the straps and the webbing underneath, and just replaced it with a little bit more horsehair to make it a bit more softer. As well as furniture, Stephen also repaired fixtures and fittings across Windsor Castle, allowing him to explore the treasures it had to offer. I have photographs of my family, but they're family portraits, paintings, and lots of them. The library, which not many people get a chance to see, fantastic set of original Leonardo da Vinci drawings in there. I mean, you're standing in front of images that you recognise instantly. To see them that close, it's incredible. But on the 20th of November 1992, disaster struck. Good evening. Windsor Castle, home to one of the greatest art collections in the world, is still burning tonight after nearly 12 hours. Parts of the historic building are now little more than a burnt out shell. The Queen should have been celebrating her 45th wedding anniversary today. Instead, she spent it helping to carry royal treasures to safety. She's said to be devastated by the fire. It started in the Queen's private chapel when the curtain caught light, when it was in contact with the spotlight. It went up in flames and quickly spread. And the reason why there was a lamp there was somebody was doing some restoration. So it was one of these cases where they were trying to renovate and ended up burning the whole place down. There's no precedent for the scale and size of the fire at Windsor Castle. It was just the most astonishing and unbelievable event. I'd known Windsor since I was a little boy. The idea that this place could be in flames, 200 firefighters, 39 fire engines, and there'd be nothing like a fire on that scale in somewhere so important. As the fire spread from the chapel to engulf St George's Hall and Brunswick Tower, the staff scrambled to save the precious artefacts. The great thing of having a household of a couple of hundred staff is that they were all there on site to save as much as possible, not delicately. I mean, some things were just ripped off the walls rather than lose it. Huge artefacts, vast amounts of furniture, paintings, works of art. Now, luckily, a lot of them had been removed because the place was being renovated. Only one huge painting and a large sideboard were lost. In terms of works of art, it was miraculous, really, that very little was lost. But of course, in terms of estate rooms, it was absolutely devastation. All in all, over 100 rooms were affected. A massive restoration project would be needed to restore the damaged rooms. But the question was, who would pay for it? Who actually owned Windsor Castle? The devastating fire at Windsor Castle in November 1992 came at a difficult time for the Royal Family and the Queen. Anyone who remembers at the time would have seen those images of the fire brigade dousing the place with water and the Queen arriving to survey the damage. It was a really tragic image of a Queen who, at the time, was engulfed with various Royal Family scandals and the disintegration of her children's marriage. And it became a kind of emblem of a monarch who was really struggling. Only four days after the fire, she gave a speech. 1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis. It would also be an expensive year, as the government had to row back their offer to pay the £37 million for repairs. There was a huge outcry. People said it's ridiculous that at a time of economic stringency, which there was in the early 90s, that the public should pay to restore what's the Queen's. The Queen agreed to foot the bill and paid for it by opening parts of Buckingham Palace to paying visitors. Recently, restoration costs have sparked debate again. The Queen received an extra £369 million from the government for renovations at Buckingham Palace, raising the question, who actually owned the Royal Palaces? With an institution that's a thousand years old and an institution that owns a thousand years' worth of property, you can imagine the picture is actually quite complicated. A few hundred years ago, it was simpler. Until the reign of George III, that's in 1760, all the Royal Palaces belonged to the monarch as effectively personal property. Until the 18th century, there was no distinction between the King and the government. It really was His Majesty's or Her Majesty's government. So the King paid for all government expenditure, and that came out of the Crown's resources, the Crown's estate. This was a vast property portfolio. But with the increasing costs of running a country, George III wanted to rid himself of this financial burden. So in 1760, George III says, all of the property, all the money from that can go to the state. In exchange, you must give me a civil list to pay for the expenses of me and my household. In addition to this yearly grant, he retained the right for monarchs to occupy the Royal Palaces. That is the origin of the current situation, where you have buildings that are the Queen's in right of Crown. In other words, they are hers because she is Queen. They actually belong to the state. They belong to the Crown, not the person. This is the case with Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. This is also true of the palaces no longer used as royal residences, such as Hampton Court, Kew Palace, or the Tower of London. So yes, there are properties kind of held in trust that they can make use of, but equally they have private homes that they buy themselves according to the locations they want to be living in. Two such properties the Queen inherited, and she owns outright. One of these private estates is nestled in the highlands of Scotland. Balmoral in Aberdeenshire is a particular favourite royal residence, and it's where the Queen goes to for her summer months. This was a purchase of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who fell in love with Scotland. They went up to the highlands for a holiday and loved it so much, they decided they must have a home there. Balmoral was available and so they took it, but without even viewing it. They bought it in 1852 and demolished the castle and built a new one using granite and in the sort of old Gothic style, and that's what survives today. And Queen Victoria and Albert absolutely loved it. They spent many happy times there, and that's really been a tradition that's passed down in the years since. The Queen's other private home is Sandringham in Norfolk. This one is a hand-me-down too, thanks again to her great-great-grandparents Victoria and Albert. They had encouraged their son and heir to the throne Edward to move out of the family home and find a place of his own, so he set out to find a suitable location. He was looking for a place for shooting basically, and Norfolk is a famous county for partridge and pheasant shooting, and Edward VII built this really quite large house as a shooting lodge really. Today it's where the Queen and her family like to spend Christmas and New Year, in surroundings very similar to those Edward would have enjoyed. You can go inside Sandringham and it really is simply extraordinary. I mean it's the most marvellous relic of the 1880s. Incredibly elaborate pieces of furniture. Of course, there's much more to Sandringham and Balmoral than just the main residences. None of these are just a single structure. They are all set in a massive landholding, and those estates have on them subsidiary houses, cottages, stables. Although they're given names like lodge or cottage, they're hardly cramped or pokey. Most of us would consider them sizeable properties. The Queen and Duke often stayed in these when they wanted a cosier living space, but they are also ideal homes for the extended family. The three-storey Amner Hall on the Sandringham estate was gifted to William and Kate by the Queen. Bourke Hall on the Balmoral estate was inherited by Charles from his grandmother, the Queen Mother. It comes with its own 53,000 acres of land. But as well as dishing out inherited properties, the Queen has used other means to help get a home for her kids. She has purchased properties. Princess Anne wants to buy somewhere in Gloucestershire. With her mother's help, she buys Gatcombe Park. She has leased properties. In the vicinity of Windsor and Windsor Great Park, there are a number of royal residences which actually belong to the Crown Estate, and one of those is Bagshot Park. It was leased from the Crown Estate for Prince Edward, whose residence it now is. And one property the Queen received as a gift. In the grounds of Royal Lodge is perhaps the smallest of royal properties, Bitham Buck, the little house, which was given by the people of Wales to Princess Elizabeth in 1932, I think for her sixth birthday. And it's a little thatched cottage, white painted, and it's two-thirds the size of a real cottage. It's fully kitted out, but everything is not quite the full size. The fully functioning house was built behind Royal Lodge in Windsor, where Princess Elizabeth lived with her parents before they became King and Queen in 1936. In 1990, the Queen Mother shared her memories of the little cottage. We're greatly loved by the children, you can imagine. Of each generation? Every generation. But you can imagine the children. I've had the most awful meals here. Oh yes, cooked to death. Especially good. Horrible. Do you have to eat? But it is a nice little quiet place, isn't it? The little house is one of the newer properties in the Royal's portfolio. Most are listed buildings. As the Royals move into their new abodes, they try and marry modern design with ancient tradition. William and Kate, when they took over apartment 1A, which was previously Princess Margaret's apartment, have done a complete transformation. The only time that we have really seen inside William and Catherine's apartment at Kensington Palace is when Barack and Michelle Obama came over, and there's that lovely photo of the Obamas greeting Prince George in his lovely dressing gown. So we have seen glimpses of it. The Queen hired interior designer Sir Hugh Casson to modernise some of her private rooms when she was younger, but these remain hidden from view. However, we can get a sense of what these might have looked like. She also commissioned an entirely new Royal Palace, which was the Royal Yacht Britannia, and Sir Hugh Casson designed all the interiors in there. And if you want to get a flavour of what the Queen's taste was in the 50s when she came to the throne, go to the Royal Yacht. I mean, it's all there, and you can see what the Queen and the Prince felt was really comfortable and fashionable. It was a sort of Festival of Britain, 1950s utilitarian style, and was probably a bit of a relief from the grandeur of the sort of museum-like places they mostly inhabited. As well as renovating the seemingly endless hand-me-down properties, the royal property portfolio is still expanding. The most iconic royal buildings have been inhabited by the royals for centuries. But in 1980, Charles added something special to the property portfolio. Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. When Prince Charles got into his 20s, there was a bit of a debate about where he should live, because it's obviously a bit unsatisfactory living in a flat in Buckingham Palace. And so there were various places considered, and in the end, the Duchy of Cornwall, which is the estate which belongs to the Prince of Wales, in right of him being Prince of Wales, bought Highgrove House in the 1980s for about £800,000. It's not a big estate, it's a relatively small estate, and the house is relatively small as country houses go. But it's the garden that has come to epitomise Charles's property. David Howard was Highgrove's head gardener from 1998 to 2008. I had nine garden staff whilst I was at Highgrove. A 15-acre garden. And there were various component parts to this garden, so there was an orchard, there was a woodland garden, a walled garden, there was an arboretum, the sundial garden, and then there's the terrace and the cottage garden. The garden also has wildflower meadows, because Prince Charles is very keen on attracting wildlife and preserving nature, and his philosophy has always been to work with nature and not against it. The Prince had grown up with gardens. In all of the royal palaces, there had been gardens, and I feel that his grandmother was a great influence on him with regards to gardening. And I think when he came to Highgrove, he saw a blank canvas, a big canvas, and he had to find professional help to help him achieve a garden. David Howard got the job as head gardener in part due to a horticultural philosophy he shares with the Prince. In many respects, he's ahead of his time. I think what attracted me to the position was the definite leaning towards organic farming, organic gardening. Prince Charles was very much an early proponent of organic farming and sustainability, and he's incorporated this not only into the Highgrove gardens, but also into the farms that are on the wider estate. The environmentally conscious Prince is keen for others to follow suit, and has made a big push to get more trees planted. He has led by example. I don't think the Prince of Wales knows how many trees he's planted, but it goes into many thousands. When Prince Charles plants a tree, he likes to shake its branch, a little branch on it, and wish it well for the future, which is quite a nice little touch. Prince Charles is a busy man, so grabbing a moment to get his approval for the latest plans for the garden was not always easy. One of his great loves was keeping his chickens, and I knew what time he used to feed the chickens, so I knew that if I was hovering around the chicken pen at that said time, I was going to see him, and that was an opportune time for me to discuss any aspect of the garden, any other business, before he really started his other daily routine. Together with his gardeners, he has created a property that reflects his passions. It's run on organic principles, it's got lots of original and quirky ideas. There's an element of whimsy, which is Charles's character. It's about countryside practices, but it's horticulturally rather exquisite. The royal family currently have over 20 properties at their disposal across the British Isles, although they have access to many more. This luxury comes with a headache of keeping all of them spic and span. Of course, the royals have a small army of staff to help them. There's lots of grand and ancient titles, but actually they disguise a basic department of state. You've got the Lord Chamberlain, but he's in charge of ceremonial. There's the Master of Horse, well that's a very grand, ancient title, but actually horses, carriages, he's also in charge of cars. The Ladies of the Bedchamber, well they're the ladies-in-waiting who go and engage us with the Queen, so you've got these very elaborate titles, but it's a finely honed, very efficient, constantly modernising organisation. The way the royal family works, I've always said it's like a well-oiled machine. You've got all the different departments or the different branches, if you're all at the palace, and everybody has got an important role to do, and that's what makes it work. It's not just one person, it's a team. From chefs to cleaners, footmen to gardeners, it's believed around a thousand staff work for the Queen. The Prince of Wales is more modest, Highgrove has around a hundred staff, whereas the Duke and Duchess have a core team of around a dozen. Most of the royal staff live in the palaces or in smaller properties around the estates. When I first arrived and I got the job, a property came with the actual job, so myself and my family lived there for five years. It's a gardener or a military knight or somebody from the farm shop. I mean, it's quite a close-knit community. How many times do you walk to work and see the Duke of Edinburgh just casually wave to you as you're walking out the path? I mean, it doesn't happen every day. But having staff close by is key if the royal family are to be a success as representatives of the United Kingdom. From keeping distinguished guests entertained. His Royal Highness might say, please could you give my guests a tour around the garden? And you had to stop whatever you were doing and take them on a tour around the garden. To making sure the antiques are looking as good as new. When you have events, all the furniture is used. So it's not like a museum where it's behind a rope. Drink spills, general wear and tear. It's going to need replacing. Anticipating the royal's needs. The thing about being a butler, you have to think ahead, plan ahead. You've got to know what somebody wants before they know it. That's a really good butler. And ensuring they're well fed. You're going to want to show off, aren't you? Yeah, this is what we do. This is what we're good at. This is our produce. You know, you're the head of the country. You want to show them what the country has got to offer. The royal household tries to maintain a polished image of the British crown. That perfect picture has been developed over centuries. Because it doesn't matter whether you're a member of the royal family in the 16th century, 17th century, 18th century. The staff of that royal family have always wanted to create that perfect picture. Today, that perfect picture is seen across the world during weddings, jubilees, and birthdays. It has helped make the British royal family the most recognisable and iconic institutions in the world. The buildings they live in, or those of their ancestors, draw millions of visitors every year. There has been controversy about the funding of all these homes, but they remain lasting symbols of the British royal lineage and have become icons in their own right.