There are not many who can claim the queen pulled a gun on them, but Valentine Low got closer to the royals than most.
As royal correspondent for the UK’s The Times, he travelled all over the world on royal tours. Now, the author of Power And The Palace reveals which Windsors are the friendliest and which are not.
“Royal tours are not as glamorous as people think,” Valentine, 66, tells Woman’s Day. They’re exhausting, he says – especially if you’re accompanying the King. “You have to scrabble to keep up with his amazing schedule,” as the energetic monarch, “packs in an awful lot to his trips and famously doesn’t have lunch.”
Despite being invited, royal reporters are kept at a distance, “behind a rope or metal barrier”, he says – and heaven help anyone who calls out a question. “Charles gets very antsy if you do. I saw a TV reporter once shout out and he was quite withering,” says Valentine. The friendliest is Camilla, he reveals, “She’ll always come and say hello. She will catch your eye and there would be a light in her eye.”
PLAYING FAVOURITES
And the grumpiest? That gong goes to Prince Harry, says Valentine, who was on the 2018 Australian tour, flying to Sydney from Tonga, when Harry and Meghan reluctantly came to the back of the plane to address the press pack. Instead of the usual interview, Harry said, “Thanks very much for coming, even though you weren’t invited.”
“It was quite shocking,” says Valentine. “We were quite stunned by the rudeness. We had all come a long way, at some expense in terms of family life and cost to our newspapers and television stations. So to have Harry say we weren’t invited – which was stupid and not true – went down really badly.”
The Duke of Sussex hadn’t always been so surly, he says. “In the old days he was really friendly. I can remember the era when he used to greet the Daily Mail’s royal reporter with a kiss. He’s a very different chap to what he used to be.”
Harry has claimed his family brief against him – so is that true? No, says Valentine. “I’m very sceptical about Harry’s claims. I don’t buy it. No one briefed me negatively,” he says, adding any comments were “actually genuine concern”.
As to what the late Queen really thought about Meghan, Valentine was on the trip they took together on the Royal Train to Cheshire in 2018 and they “seemed to get on OK. I suspect she found her a bit puzzling, but I think she wanted her grandson to be happy”.
So how does he balance writing stories about the royals while maintaining a relationship with them? “You develop a thick skin,” he says. “You can’t care if you’re going to annoy someone, you have to write the truth as you see it, you can’t hold back, show any fear or favour.
“They do get cross,” he adds. “I’ve been put in the freezer, but it never lasts long.” Who iced him out, he won’t say, but concedes he once upset the usually jolly Camilla when he accidentally revealed the death of Lady Sybil Crawley in Downton Abbey. “I was on tour in 2012, in Queensland, when Camilla walks in and diverts to come over to me. ‘That’s nice,’ I thought, ‘Isn’t she friendly, as always.’ But she says, ‘Valentine, you totally ruined my Downton.’”
SPECIAL MOMENTS
Equally friendly, he says, are William and Kate, who are going out of their way to appear more down-to-earth than the late Queen, or Charles. “There’s always been this element with William,” says Valentine. “It’s part of the natural informality of his generation, and also an attempt to make the royal family more human and approachable and less remote.
“But I wonder where it leads,” he says, “because the whole point of the royal family is that they are special. If you make yourself not special, the more you undermine that.”
Talking of special – he says there was one stand-out memory of his time on tour. “When Camilla pulled a gun on me.” He was in Denmark with Charles and Camilla, in 2012, he explains, and Camilla, who was a big fan of the Danish TV series The Killing, went to the filming location with then-Princess Mary.
“They go into the wardrobe trailer, with lead actor Sofie Grabol, while I linger outside,” he says. “Camilla takes the prop gun, puts on this comedy voice, and says, ‘Ha ha, it was me all along,’” and points it at me. And Princess Mary says, ‘Now you’ll have to write something nice.’ “It was such a brilliant moment – and made the front page.”
Power And The Palace (Hachette, $34.99), Buy Now.
