As last month’s heatwave tightened its grip on Britain, 250 delegates assembled in the Throne Room at St James’s Palace for a reception focused on climate change.
The centuries-old London palace is not equipped with air conditioning, leaving guests to endure punishing temperatures despite efforts to make the room bearable. Curtains were pulled shut to block out the worst of the sun, while large fans were positioned around the space.
Yet one figure appeared determined not to surrender to the heat: King Charles. Dressed with his customary precision, he kept his shirt’s top button firmly fastened and showed no sign of taking off the jacket of his grey Anderson & Sheppard suit.
His sole allowance for the oppressive conditions was an occasional, discreet dab of the forehead with a lilac silk handkerchief, carefully chosen to match his Turnbull & Asser tie.
The King’s Master of the Household, Vice Admiral Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt, was sufficiently concerned for the monarch — who continues to receive treatment for an unspecified form of cancer — that he held an electric fan beside the King’s head in an urgent effort to keep him cool.
It was another striking illustration of King Charles’s insistence on upholding traditional standards at a time when formality and dress codes are increasingly treated as optional, if not outdated.
That shift towards a looser approach to public dress was underlined this week by our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, the career politician known for cultivating his “man of the people” image by appearing as casually as possible.
King Charles kept his top button fastened and never considered removing his suit jacket — even as the Master of the Household, Vice Admiral Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt, held an electric fan beside the King’s head
While the King trieds valiantly to uphold standards, his younger son Harry seems determined to lower them, writes Richard Eden
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Indeed, Burnham’s aides let it be known that he would wear a shirt and tie only when he was at the Houses of Parliament. On other occasions, he would wear casual outfits such as his favourite dark blue T-shirt and jeans.
Burnham donned a suit and tie for his visit to Buckingham Palace on Monday when he met the King and was asked to form a government. He promptly discovered that he would not be known as ‘Andy’ by the palace but the more formal ‘Andrew’.
The Court Circular, the official record of royal engagements undertaken by working members of the Royal Family, reported the next day: ‘His Majesty received in audience the Rt Hon Andrew Burnham MP and requested him to form a new Administration.’
The moniker may have come as a surprise to Burnham, whose Labour campaign posters in the Makerfield by-election had all screamed: ‘Vote Andy’.
But the King is not the only member of the Royal Family who believes in maintaining formal terms of address. His sister, Princess Anne, once had an awkward exchange with the wife of a previous Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, during the couple’s first visit to Balmoral to stay with the late Queen Elizabeth II at her beloved Scottish residence.
Lancashire-born Cherie Blair recalled in her memoirs, Speaking For Myself: ‘At one point in that first year, Princess Anne came over and said something that included “Mrs Blair”. “Oh. Please call me Cherie,” I said. “I’d rather not,” she replied. “It’s not the way I’ve been brought up.”’
Cherie added that her relationship with the princess ‘went rapidly downhill and never recovered’.
While the King tried valiantly to uphold standards, his younger son seems determined to lower them. Prince Harry appeared in a podcast which was so un-regal that it came with a warning on the BBC Sounds website: ‘Contains very strong language, adult humour and some scenes of a sexual nature.’
On the X-rated podcast, Joe Marler Will See You Now, Harry gave his occupation as ‘Prince of England’ before proceeding to use foul language in the discussion with the former England rugby player, which covered subjects such as the grooming of their body hair.
It represented a new low for the duke, who had used his memoir, Spare, to disclose, among other things, how he had lost his virginity in a field behind a pub and used a cream with a scent that reminded him of his late mother Diana to treat frostbite on his penis after an expedition to the North Pole.
This week, I asked a friend of the King about his determination to maintain standards. He told me: ‘His Majesty believes that monarchy needs to be dignified.’
Clearly, that message hasn’t got through to all members of his family…
