


11 Sep 2026 · 30m · 13 chapters

Dickie Arbiter, Queen Elizabeth II’s former press secretary, discusses royal communications and media management, arguing that Harry and Meghan’s current messaging is a “blame game” and “nonsense,” especially around their status as non-working royals and the Invictus Games controversy involving Uganda.
Dickie Arbiter (former royal press secretary; crisis management during 1992 “annus horribilis,” Charles–Diana breakdown, Windsor Fire, and paparazzi/child-photo rules). Hosts: Hannah Furness and Camilla Tominey (The Telegraph’s “The Royal Tea”).
Palace lines between “private and public” were strict; Sussexes want to be treated as public figures while claiming privacy; Harry “whinges” and shifts blame; William refuses reconciliation until Harry apologises and means it.
1992 Windsor Fire coverage; Diana’s Egypt paparazzi incident; Diana visiting Mount Pleasant to ensure lovers’ letters left for James Hewitt; Uganda pulling out of Invictus Games after royal-status statements.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Dickie shares experiences from the royal family's crisis management.
“You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built.”
Dickie shares experiences from the royal family's crisis management.
“He went out, first question from a reporter on television, who's going to pay for it?”
Discussion on the complexities of privacy for royals and the press.
“And we would have program meetings and they wouldn't be talking to each other, sitting opposite each other at the table.”
Exploring the current dynamics involving Harry and Meghan.
“I'm not sure the royal family are currently in crisis.”
Insights into the media management during Charles and Diana's marriage.
“two people on the brink of divorce with possibly a third person involved, briefing the press.”
Analyzing the ongoing relationships and tensions within the royal family.
“But what did you mean by that, that you felt that the Windsors at the time hadn't properly internally dealt with this growing feud and that it then spilled out into the headlines?”
Explore the complex family dynamics between Harry, William, and the impact on their relationships.
“and his family are right up there at the top along with his job and some days he has difficulty deciding what is more important, the job or the family.”
Discuss the public's view on Harry and Meghan's roles and the palace's communication strategies.
“As hosts of The Telegraph's podcast Iran the Latest, it's our job to keep you up to speed on what's going on in the Middle East.”
Examine how the royal family engages with the public differently today compared to the past.
“So he was allowed to carry on his job as head of state, but not head of nation.”
Analyze the potential future of the monarchy and its appeal to younger generations.
“He got out of the water with this woman in a bikini.”
Hear personal stories about royal interactions, including a memorable encounter with Prince Andrew.
“Dickie, tell us about your interactions with Prince Andrew.”
Explore insights on royal personalities and relationships through anecdotes.
“So I picked up the phone and my colleague said, what are you going to do?”
Explore insights on royal personalities and relationships through anecdotes.
“I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On The Daily T, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
0:02The Telegraph.
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1:46How exactly do you handle warring royals and the stories they leaked to the press? Queen Elizabeth II's former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, joins us to reveal all about what really goes on behind those palace walls. They breeze in here as if they'd never left and expecting to pick up where they left off six years ago. And it is nonsense. It is total nonsense. They're blaming everybody for their ills. There was a very fine line that we weren't to walk over. it was made very clear to us by the family that there is private and there is public, and we were only allowed to deal with public. And I don't know why I blurted out, but I said, well, it's a pity the family didn't take note of what was actually going on with the prince and princess.
2:31And very quietly, it wasn't anger, very quietly she said, the family is my problem, not yours. Wow, Dickie, that's quite the exchange. Welcome to The Royal Tea with me, Hannah Furness And me, Camilla Tominy Dickie, thank you so much for joining us Anybody who reads this book will understand how you have been at the heart of the royal family crisis management for decades Can you give us a little rundown of your top hits of things that you have lived through and helped them survive? Well, I suppose the biggest thing I lived through was the Addis Herribilis in 1992 when anything that could go wrong did go wrong and it went wrong for 12 months culminating not only in the separation of Charles and Diana, but the Windsor Fire, when an MP, Peter Brook, who was then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, having been briefed not to say anything, because we weren't hiding anything, we just didn't know the extent of the fire, how it was going to be restored, what the cost would be.
3:31He went out, first question from a reporter on television, who's going to pay for it? The government will pay. And from then on, for weeks, the Queen was castigated because there were all sorts of comments. Every newspaper was having a go. Why should the public pay for it? It so happened that at the end of the day, Queen decided to open Buckingham Palace. 27 million of the 35 million was paid for out of visitor admissions to the palace and to Windsor Castle. So, you know, it was hard at the beginning, but it was soft at the end. But I suppose the real hard bit, when I joined in 88, Charles and Diana's marriage was going pear-shaped.
4:14It really was on the rocks. And we would have program meetings and they wouldn't be talking to each other, sitting opposite each other at the table. And these were hard to manage and also hard to manage when she was going on solo tours. She decided to do these, some of them with no context whatsoever. and the king would say to me as Prince of Wales, what did you do on the tour? What was it for? And I didn't have an answer. And it was your job then to fend the likes of us off. Oh, come on. How did you deal with it? You were nice people. It wasn't easy. I think the biggest problem was dealing with the paparazzi and quite a lot of the, there used to be a separation with photographers.
4:57Black and white were newspapers. as colour photographers were magazines and freelancers. And what used to happen was that when there was a sports day for William and Harry, when they were at school in London at Weatherby, they'd have sports day at Richmond Sports Club and the ladders would go up against the wall. So there was no privacy. There were no rules about photographing children. This came very much later after the death of Diana when it became very clear that you couldn't photograph children under the age of 16 without the consent of the parents. So that was difficult to manage. And also difficult to manage.
5:33There was one incident in Egypt. Diana was staying at the ambassador's residence. She was swimming. And there were photographers in a block of flats across the road taking photographs, literally over the wall. I ended up by banning them from tours. And Diana didn't like that. She didn't like anybody being banned. But you can't have it both ways. You either want your privacy or you don't. but don't say I want my privacy and then castigate the guy that's banning the photographers. Speaking of which, we know another couple who quite like their privacy but aren't quite sure what that means. Yes. I'm not sure the royal family are currently in crisis.
6:08Some think they are. What is your reading of the Harry-Meghan nonsense as it now must be called thanks to the Ugandan defence minister? Nonsense is being very polite. Well, is it nonsense, Dickie? What? Is it nonsense? Well, you know, they breeze in here as if they've never left and expecting to pick up where they left off six years ago. And it is nonsense. It is total nonsense. They're blaming everybody for their ills. They're blaming everybody. Uganda, you mentioned a moment ago. Yes, let's just get into that story in case anyone hasn't seen it. Uganda has pulled out of the Invictus Games and Harry, through his people, seems to be suggesting that's because the king at the beginning of the week issued this statement confirming the fact that they are non-working royals.
6:53And as far as the prince is concerned, this kind of denigration of their status means that countries like Uganda aren't taking the game seriously enough to participate. Now, I think we can all make of that what we will, but it comes back to the central point that you made at the very beginning of this. Sometimes palace comms can lose control of comms, especially if you've got a minister outside saying, oh, the government's going to foot the bill for the Windsor Fire. You've also experienced the War of the Waleses, where you're having to control the cums of two warring people, two people on the brink of divorce with possibly a third person involved, briefing the press.
7:27I'm going to interrupt there. Go on. You say a third person. There were four people, actually, because Diana was having affairs too. Right. But did you know at the time of the War of the Waleses that Camilla was on the scene and that Diana was having an affair? Yes, because Dinah would go to the leading sorting office, post office sorting offices at Mount Pleasant. And every time she wrote a letter to Hewitt, who was based in Iraq at the time. So we're talking about James Hewitt. James Hewitt, yes. She'd go to the sorting office just to... I don't know whether she'd find the message. Personally?
8:01Yeah, personally, she would go to the sorting office as an experience, as a royal visit. What? Dickie, sorry, explain that. Princess Diana turns up at the sorting office in Mount Pleasant under the guise of a royal visit to posties to try and find James Hewitt's personal correspondence. No, no, she wasn't looking for the personal correspondence, but she was going there to make sure that letters were leaving. Lovers' letters. Lovers' letters leaving the country. But, Dickie, when loads of journalists, basically our forebears, Hannah, were phoning you up going, come on Dickie, there's a third person in this marriage, isn't there?
8:39And I'm talking pre-Panorama interview. I'm just saying that everybody in Fleet Street had a feeling that all was not well in the Wales marriage and that there may be other people involved. What could you then say to them? You must have had to say, no, nothing to see here. There was a very fine line that we weren't to walk over. It was made very clear to us by the family that there is private and there is public and we were only allowed to deal with public. Now, I make this point in the book. Let's give the book. On duty with the royals. This is the book. I'm going to show the book as well. Why not?
9:12Top plug it. Go on, Dickie. I make the point. When I went to get my LVO from the late Queen. Explain what that is. LVO is a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order. It's a special honour bestowed upon people who work for royalty. It is bestowed by the monarch and the heir to the throne. Yes. And she said to me, I think you deserve this. And I don't know why I blurted out, but I said, well, it's a pity the family didn't take note of what was actually going on with the prince and princess. And very quietly, it wasn't anger, very quietly she said, the family is my problem, not yours. Wow, Dickie, that's quite the exchange.
9:53That was quite an exchange. And we carried on talking. That was the end of it. She never told anybody about it. But what did you mean by that, that you felt that the Windsors at the time hadn't properly internally dealt with this growing feud and that it then spilled out into the headlines? Well, it was spilling out. It was spilling out daily into the headlines. And I felt that the family should be doing something. And whether they were or not, we weren't told. We weren't allowed to talk about anything in relation to the state of the marriage. as far as we were concerned, and we were told to be concerned, is that the state of the marriage was okay.
10:34But it clearly wasn't. As to your point, Hannah, plus ça change. It's the same with the Sussexes, and we've got this briefing war now between Harry and Meghan and the palace, haven't we? Yeah, more briefing on one side than the other, I would say. So the palace have done this in a very palace way. Dickie, please tell us your thoughts, because you were the expert on this. They have laid down the law, I think probably safe to say, with this letter to the Lord Lieutenant, the military, senior stakeholders, key stakeholders, they call it, to explain what Harry and Meghan are doing back in Britain and how people should treat them.
11:07So if, for example, Harry rings the Lord Lieutenant's office, which I'm not sure he would, but if he did, I'm going to do a visit to this charity. They need to know, do we call them your Royal Highness? Do we put on anything extra? Do I need to go and host it somehow like they would for the royal family? They have sent this letter clarifying it. But in it, if you're the Sussexes, it feels to them very pointed. They're going over the ground. You are private citizens. They feel like this is some kind of dig ahead of their security. And they have thoughts on it. They don't want to be known as private citizens.
11:42They want to be known as public figures. What else did they say? But then we come back to the whole, you know, South Park parody that they're on a world privacy tour. make your minds up. You are private citizens or you are public figures. This is the thing. This is why people think there's a kind of cake and eat it desire. Yeah, but it's not for them to decide whether they're public figures. It's for the public to decide whether they're public figures. They're definitely public figures. Listen, we can all pick them out of a line out. Come on. Well, we can pick them out of a line. But, you know, going back to what Hannah said about this letter that was put out by the Lord Chamberlain, He was only reminding and reiterating what was agreed in January 2020.
12:23There's nothing new in it. Nothing new at all. And why Harry is whinging, it's always somebody else's fault. Never their fault. Always somebody else's. What's your personal experience of Prince Harry? I don't have much experience of him as an adult. I have no experience of him as an adult. As a kid, he was boisterous. He was fun. He was always up for doing things he shouldn't do, being a naughty boy. Was he? Naughtier than William? Yes, he was more upfront than William. William tended to be reserved. He's not so reserved now, but Harry was quite wild. I mean, what do you make of the comms around Prince William and Kate resolutely resisting a reconciliation?
13:09The king as a father obviously loves his son and his grandchildren and has extended an olive branch. And there's been teas and there's been meetings. And of course, there's been the great return. There's only been one meeting. OK. William and Kate are digging in their heels saying, no, we don't want to be sucked into the Sussex psychodrama. Thank you very much. But then I'm wondering whether that might adversely affect his comms if it looks as if William is being almost too stubborn about it. I don't think for a moment William is being stubborn. He's been hurt by Harry. There's no question about that.
13:42He's taken on the hurt of the criticism for Catherine because they've been quite vocal about Catherine. and William is very protective of his wife and I think that's a good thing. He's very much a family-oriented man and his family are right up there at the top along with his job and some days he has difficulty deciding what is more important, the job or the family. He made the decision when she said that she had a cancer. The family was important. So there's been a lot of hurt. He's been hurt to him, he's been hurt to his wife, and that rebounds on the rest of the family. And he's just not going to bend until Harry apologises and means it.
14:32Harry seems to think everybody else should apologise. Yes. But I'm not terribly sure for what. Watching it from our side of the fence, it has felt to me over the last few years that William actually can shoulder quite a lot of criticism. So you brought up when the princess had cancer. before we were told she had cancer, he missed an event and he got a lot of criticism for that. And he would rather just absorb that than explain it before he's ready to explain it. And before at the time Catherine was ready to explain it. People who have worked with the Sussexes or have known the Sussexes always tend to say they need to have the last word.
15:09And that seems to be the case with this is that there's this idea that they want that the king should have put in his letter that they're still beloved members of the family which is what the queen did in the Sandringham summit did they negotiate that at the time in hindsight maybe that was one of the conditions for making for making those announcements they like and they feel the need I think to respond and to correct things yeah that are in the public eye that's right it's a phenomenon but also the kind of the Sussex thing it's like a game of ping pong isn't it back and forward back and forward whereas you very much get the impression probably because that's their destiny that the Waleses are able to play a much longer game, Dickie.
15:49I mean, do you think the palace is handling the comms around the Great Return well? Let me give you a little statistic. Can we just add one thing about the two men, because they are men, not boys any longer. They handle things differently. William mourns his mother, but he mourns her privately. Harry mourns her publicly and hangs on to her coattails. In everything that he does, it's in his mother's name. and he's got to learn to break free. Mourn your mother. Yes, we've all lost parents. We all mourn our lost parents, but we don't do it in public. And he's got to stop doing it in public before people can really take him seriously.
16:34I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company.
17:13This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.
17:34I'm Vinicius Rainey. And I'm Roland Oliphant. As hosts of The Telegraph's podcast Iran the Latest, it's our job to keep you up to speed on what's going on in the Middle East. Join us every day as we ask, can the US put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions once and for all? Who will come out on top in the peace talks? Has this war damaged America's ability to take on China? And what are the long-term implications for the wider world? Search Iran the latest and listen wherever you get your podcasts. We're also now on video. Watch us on YouTube and on The Telegraph's website.
18:10I'm just going to give you the statistics from a recent survey by YouGov, which is interesting. 16 % of Britons would like Harry and Meghan to be working royals again, but 51 % disagree. So then that begs the question, has the palace got the comms right on this in light of this kind of they said, they said row that is ongoing? And as you say, the Sussexes can't help but react to every little thing that is done in royal life. But the public are clearly seeing through this or seeing it for what it is and saying, no, we don't want you to return to the firm in an official capacity, which therefore suggests, along with the Wales' superior approval rating to the Sussexes, that there has been criticism of palace comms.
18:56But maybe the Palace have handled Megxit and beyond quite well, actually. I think they have handled it well. They've been upfront. They have been secretive about it. I mean, they haven't been secretive about the King's health. If you go back to when Lake Queen was alive, we had time and time again, she has mobility issues. We didn't know what these issues were. Yes. But the king, when he went to hospital for an enlarged prostate, it was announced. It almost broke down the NHS website with a number of inquiries. Then the announcement that he had a cancer, the announcement that Kate was actually, that Catherine was actually forced into making on video that she had a cancer as well.
19:36This would never have happened in the Queen's reign. No, I mean, we didn't know that she had cancer until after she died. No. So it's very different. So the comms are handling it well. I mean, the announcement of prostrate and cancer was a masterstroke of communications. And the other thing is that the king is very much on board with communications. Because if you remember, he was told right at the very beginning that he could do his constitutional duty, but he would have to be in Buckingham Palace. He wasn't allowed to go out. So he was allowed to carry on his job as head of state, but not head of nation.
20:09Head of nation is gallivanting around the country. And he very purposely, in commuting from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, driving there, being driven there, rolled the windows down so people could see him. So, yes, he had a cancer, but he was OK and he was responding to treatment because the treatment has now been reduced. Now you look at him, he's still having treatment and he's dashing around the country like a 25-year-old. There's a theme here, isn't there, of sort of steadiness and sturdiness and leadership and in a country that sometimes feels a bit wobbly at the moment. What is it, eight prime ministers in 10 years?
20:48Sussex Circus, as we must call it nowadays. Cancer in the family, not one but two senior members of the family. Do you think that the public sort of craves or needs some kind of steady leadership? How did the royal family learn what the public want and decide how they respond? They learn by going around the country, doing walkabouts and talking to them. And we have today something that we would never have seen under the Queen's reign, a king being hugged. Yes. But I remember there was a New Zealand, I think it was a hockey team, at a reception at Buckingham Palace. New Zealand women's rugby team.
21:25And we were all hugging him. Yeah, I saw him hugged actually when we went to Kosovo and he was extremely popular there with the war widows because he had tried to raise their plight. 5 ,000 husbands, sons, brothers, all still missing, never found. And he was mobbed and it was actually quite an emotional moment. But he's quite tactile. But you're right, Dickie, you would no sooner have hugged Queen Elizabeth II. But you wouldn't have hugged Charles in the days when... Well, is this a good thing? Do we want touchy-feely royals or do we want royals that are on a pedestal and slightly at a distance?
21:57We don't want royals who are aloof and at a distance. We want royals that we can communicate to. And he's shown that he can be communicated. Look at the first day he came back to Buckingham Palace after his mother had passed. He went on a walkabout. A woman pulled him forward to give him a peck on the cheek. His security didn't run forward to stop it. He just let it happen. And that was the sign of how his reign would be, that he would be quite amenable to being hugged, to have him be given a peck on the cheek. Somebody tried to snog him once when he stepped out of the sea in Sydney, didn't they?
22:30Do you remember that famous image? He got out of the water with this woman in a bikini. Yeah, that was in the 1970s. She was paid or encouraged somehow by photographers who wanted this bond shot. The media would be responsible for that just to get an image. Couldn't possibly comment on that. Honestly, Dickie. Do we think the monarchy is in good shape for the next few years? Because we also have surveys suggesting that younger people are particularly disinterested. I think that's the problem, isn't it? You can have people who are arch-royalists, and that's great, and you can have people that are arch-Republicans, and that's another matter.
23:05But isn't the biggest threat to royalty kind of ennui and boredom and I don't care either way? It's an interesting point you raise. I think the interest in the monarchy is generational. Young people, they've got too many other things on their mind. They're on TikTok, they're on their phone, they're texting, they're doing all sorts of things. By the time they get to their 30s, they're sort of, ooh, I suppose they're all right. By the time they get their 40s and 50s, they're very much interested in the monarchy. So it moves the generation. But to talk about how's the monarchy going to look in the future, it's a very interesting point because the king is going to be 78 in November.
23:41The queen is nearing 80, nearer 80 than the king. William and Catherine are going to be, they're in their 40s. Middle-aged. Middle age. Edward and Sophie are in their 60s. So by the time we get to the next reign, that's William, William could well be in his 60s. I hope it's later rather than sooner, but he could well be in his 60s. By the time George comes to the throne, he could be nearing nearer 50 than 40. So what's the backup? Well, he'll then have children. And also we've got all of the time before George takes the throne, Hannah and I were saying earlier, I mean, that picture of him at Eton, that boy is an attractive looking lad.
24:27And I just looked at that photograph of him at Eton and you wrote a brilliant newsletter on it saying, oh, hasn't he grown? And that's absolutely the sentiment. You see a boy becoming a man before your very eyes. And that makes those children more captivating and interesting. But of course, the parents want to protect them from too much media focus. That is what I found so interesting about George at Eton is it's the first time I saw him sort of in a semi-public role he's still a private child he's going to school those photographs he looked like he didn't mind posing for them he looked like he was enjoying himself when he walked across the schoolyard at Eton he was a little bit ahead of mum and dad he was the one who lent in for the handshake and made the small talk he was kind of leading the way and it's the first time we've seen that we used to see this shy little boy and I used to feel well, goodness, is this the right thing to do sometimes?
25:14Having him sort of cling to his parents' hands. He was a lot more upfront than his father was when he went to the law. Yes. Do you remember that, Dickie? Tell us. I remember that well, that he was a lot more upfront. He's not shy like his father was at the same age. His father has developed. Yes. Has developed with age. And he was living through a pretty rotten time with his parents at war, one living down at Highgrove, the other were living at Kensington Palace and the two boys being shunted between the two. It wasn't a happy scenario. But George looks very happy. I think he's very happy to be at Eden.
25:48And this is the start of the children flying the nest. Yes. Oh, don't say that. My youngest is 30. I'm trying to hold on to these children for as long as possible. But you make a point. All I'm saying is if you want to capture a generation, then obviously you have to do it with similar aged people. And if George becomes, I don't know, I'm trying to think of examples like the Timothee Chalamet of his era, I know that's a stretch, but do you remember that period where people had posters of Prince William up on their walls? Will's mania. Including possibly Kate Middleton, although she denies that.
26:21So that could just be an interesting one to watch. It's like the Beckham kids or anyone's kids, frankly. You sort of watch them grow up in the media gaze. And as they get older, they seem more relatable to their own generation and all the rest of it. Let's just move on slightly. Dickie, tell us about your interactions with Prince Andrew. You really want to know? Yeah. All right. It's in the book. I know. It's in the book. Got to read the book. I was in the office. There was a colleague there who just started two weeks before who was going to be Andrew's press secretary. Anyway, Andrew phoned and I picked up the phone.
27:03It was a garden party happening. It was a garden party for the usual 8 ,000-odd people. amongst them were something like a hundred vicars who were there for a conference that happens every 10 years at Lambeth Palace. And he said, I've got a good idea for a photograph. I said, yes. He said, get some chairs in the garden and I will tell, because it'll be a good picture of Her Majesty, always not my mother, Her Majesty, with all the clergy. So you get that sorted out. When you've done it, tell me and I will tell Her Majesty. I said, no. I said, I beg your pardon. I said, it's not your garden party.
27:45If Her Majesty wants chairs out for a photograph, she will tell the master. The master will tell me and I'll organise it. But until that happens, it's not going to happen. Bet that went down well. It did go down well. It went down with the phone. Did it? He slammed the phone down. Oh, my God. So I picked up the phone and my colleague said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to call him back. What are you going to say to him? listen. And I called him back and he said, yes, what do you want? Dickie, I'm so glad you weren't around when I was ringing you to ask difficult questions. Yes, what do you want?
28:15I said, don't you ever slam the phone down on me like that again. And I slammed the phone down. Did you? Yes. Dickie. And my colleague said, you'll get fired for that. And I said, no, you won't tell anybody. Cowards and bullies don't tell when they've been had. Oh my God, imagine. Andrew, have you ever heard one of these? Bang. I bet he has actually He said we've heard them frequently Let's be honest, he wasn't your favourite royal Who was your favourite royal? We're taking the Queen out because that's everyone's favourite royal Who was the favourite royal? I had several favourites Go on For different reasons I liked Charles He was honest And he would listen to advice Not necessarily take it But he would listen and weigh it up Unfortunately when he was Prince of Wales he tended to listen to the last person that spoke to him.
29:09So he was a favourite. Diana was a favourite. I got on well with her. I'd had tea with both of them three days before the wedding, just the three of us, and we had biscuits. Yeah, what was she like then? She was just a girl practically. She was 20. She was very naive. I said, I suppose you're terrified of this. She said, yeah, it's a bit daunting. And it would be a bit daunting because people were already camping out on the mall. when you've got probably about a million people lining the route and hundreds of millions watching on television. And even Charles was concerned about it. Yes, he'd been brought up with the Grand Ceremonial, but this was something that he'd never really experienced.
29:49So he felt daunted as well. When you saw them then, at the very beginning of their... Oh, they were tactile. Were they in love then? They were in love. Because he came out with that ridiculous, whatever love means. But they loved each other, didn't they? I'm going to apologise for him on that one. Because the royals are always brought up not to show emotion. I mean, you go back to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, go back to the Queen, go back to all of them. They never showed emotion. You know, when Mountbatten was assassinated, there were dry eyes. Charles had a lump in his throat when he was delivering the eulogy in Westminster Abbey, but there was a lump.
30:27Well, think about William and Harry following the coffin. They had to go and stow it. So they were taught not to show emotion. It's only since the death of the Queen that this whole thing of emotion has been expressed. Charles calling Camilla Darling and Camilla will take his arm, which would never have happened before. I mean, you cast your mind back, it would never have happened before. They're more open, they're more human. That's tricky. William and Kate rolling around on that video. In the sand dunes. It's a generational thing. Yeah. Charles also, I think, has a personal instinct. he sort of deflects and he quite often makes a final comment that the press office had to sort of scramble.
31:08So he'll often say, you know, I'm looking forward to come back if God lets me. Yes, if I'm still alive. And then everybody goes, no, no, he doesn't mean that. He doesn't mean that. Yeah, so whatever love means, it's him being a bit philosophical. It's a strange instinct. Yeah, but you say whatever love means, don't show emotion. And him being bounced into something like that, he really didn't know how to handle it. Yes. But at that T, they were tactile. They were darling this and darling that. And they did love each other at the beginning. But, you know, no marriage is made in heaven. Marriage is a job.
31:40And you've got to work at it. So romantic, Dickie. It is a job because, dare I say, the lust and the passion wears off. And you've got to work at it. You've got children who interfere. Yes. And the whole family has got to work at it. How many times have you been married, Dickie? I beg your pardon? How many times have you been married, Dickie? I've been married twice. That. Second time for 42 years. There you are. All right. I think we need Dickie back for a... Marriage coaching. Life coaching. Yeah, life coaching. No, but it's true. Marriage is a job. Bringing up children is a job. And it's certainly a job.
32:17And it's a tough job. I know, but I think if you've been in the middle of the War of the Wales, you've pretty much seen it all. Dickie, let's give your book a final plug. Okay. Dickie Arbiter, former Royal Press Secretary, On Duty with the Royals, the inside story of modern monarchy. And it's out now. And it's been absolutely delightful to hear your memories of working with this extraordinary family. Thank you for inviting me. It's been fun. Thank you.
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In today’s episode of The Royal T, Camilla Tominey and Hannah Furness speak to Dickie Arbiter, Queen Elizabeth II’s former press secretary, after Harry and Meghan’s return to the UK. Mr Arbiter takes issue with Prince Harry’s claim that Uganda pulled out of the Invictus Games after the King’s letter described them as “private citizens”, and claims the Sussexes are “blaming everybody for their ills”. They also discuss the Duke and Duchess’s recent return to the UK, and ask Mr Arbiter how Prince Harry and Prince William have handled their roles as royals differently over the years. Arbiter also shares his experiences handling press communications for the Palace, and recalls anecdotes involving royal figures such as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
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