The Royal Palaces: Secrets and Scandals
Kate Williams (Frances Lincoln, £25)
IN 1999, a footman working at Buckingham Palace apparently took great exception to the yapping of the late Queen’s corgis. I shall let you decide if it’s one of the ‘secrets’ or the ‘scandals’ referred to in the title of this book, but it seems that the footman started adding gin to the corgis’ bowls, amused at seeing them drunk. Alas, ‘14-year-old Phoenix died of alcohol poisoning, and the footman was in trouble’.
Back in the 16th century, at Greenwich Palace, Edward Squire got himself into far deeper trouble. The disaffected Squire worked in the palace stables and tried to kill Elizabeth I by putting poison in her saddle. The plot wasn’t revealed until a year later, when one of Squire’s confederates peached on him to save his own skin. The hapless poisoner was inevitably hanged, disembowelled and quartered for high treason.
If such
