Understanding The Royal Family || A Chat With Kerry Parnell, Royal Correspondent

Foreign.

Hello, everybody and welcome to the Real Life Real Kitchen podcast.

So overarching topics of this podcast are family, food and community.

And this week I'm going to be talking about one of the most significant families, the royal family.

So that definitely comes under the umbrella.

And I have as my guest today Kerry Parnell.

She's a freelance journalist who writes for uk, Australian and US newspapers and magazines covering royal issues and topics, travel and lifestyle.

She's a co editor of the Royal List newsletter and the British Travel List.

So all the links are in the show notes so you can find out a little bit more about her.

But Kerry has had an awful lot of experience as an observer commentator, I would say.

Oh, I don't like the word amateur, amateur historian, but a keen interest in historical context as well.

How did you shift across to royalty?

So I worked on, I edited teenage magazines back in the heyday and women's fashion magazines and then I moved into newspapers later on.

So my great editor just went, oh, I need a, you know, 50 page pull out by three days time about the Queen's reign.

You can do it to me because I was, I did, I did oversee all the features and then I was also British, so that was my qualification.

But I do love the history and heritage side of the royals.

And so I ended up going down a rabbit hole of content, writing enormous, you know, special commemorative issues and pull outs and magazines and things about the coronation and the Queen's death and the King's coronation.

And so I actually found that I really enjoy that side of it, particularly the history.

Yeah.

So putting things.

Because I suppose in terms of the royals, we have had a busy decade, 15 years or so with Diamond Jubilees.

I'm losing track of the Jubilees, but various Jubilees babies, but a lot of babies, marriages, so big weddings and then obviously death of the Queen coronation.

So that's been.

It has been busy.

And coming back to your point about the Queen being the longest reigning monarch in British and English history, um, to have that transition.

So you've got her funeral and then the Coronation.

There's a lot of kind of cultural context that people have lost since she became Queen in the early 50s.

So a lot of people are not necessarily going to be quite so familiar with the pomp and circumstance and the ceremony.

So that must have been.

How did you find that kind of conveying that across to your audience?

So very unexpectedly, suddenly the crown went to that side of the family and her destiny completely changed.

She only saw herself before that as a lady living in the country with dogs and horses.

She said, lovely, yeah.

So then she.

Not only that, but then her father died much younger than they expected as well.

So she ended up taking the throne as, at the time, her and Prince Philip were seen as super glamorous.

They were like Hollywood stars.

They were really young and they were.

Britain was going through an immense period of change post war, so they, on the one hand, they needed this wonderful pomp and circumstance of the wedding, but on the other hand, they were quite concerned that, you know, about the image it portrayed when there was still rationing and things like that.

So it was huge.

It was a huge.

Her royal wedding and her subsequent coronation, which was the first coronation to be being live on tv.

Yes, we forget that, don't we, actually?

Yeah.

And then she made a big, Quite a seismic speech, which was the first televised speech, Christmas speech, in the early 50s, and she said, and I always like this one, because she goes on about it's such a period of change and it's hard to know what to hold onto and what to let go.

Um, you know, and people feel really concerned with the pace of change the country was going through.

And, you know, that really resonates today, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

That's huge.

It's another case of history repeating, isn't it?

A little bit, yeah.

I think your point.

Your point about the television is an important one, because before that would have been radio for a couple of decades, which would have been kind of the first sort of opportunity that people would have heard the King and members of the royalty, members of the royal family.

Before that, newspapers.

Before that, it would have been the, you know, like the satirical prints and things of the 18th century.

But other than that, it's for the general public to be aware of what's going on.

It's a relatively recent phenomenon.

Yeah.

And so they were, you know, it didn't happened over, over decades, but where we are now is there's, there's really no line.

You know, they live, they live in more of a fishbowl than they ever have done.

There's not really much opportunity for the Royal family to sort of have that much privacy.

And in the end they just sort of manage their own image and what they want to say to the public by as you see people like the Princess of Wales doing all of her nature videos and things.

King and, and Catherine both put out some videos on Instagram for World Cancer Day this week about their cancer journey and how, you know, what their well wishes to everybody going through it.

I mean, all of this is, you know, if you think back to when the Queen began her reign, it would have been unthinkable to even talk like that about yourself, but also talk directly to people about it.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

What?

Because the, again, the thought strikes me, these are.

It's a regular family with all of the upheaval and the dynamics of the dodgy uncle, the slightly awkward in laws, all of these kind of things, or just kind of the family dynamics of characters not getting on, others getting on.

So you've got all of that.

But they do have these extra pressures.

So there's the publicity to begin with, but what other responsibilities?

Because this is the thing, we sort of see the royals and we go, oh, kind of the King's in charge of things, but not really.

What are the extra responsibilities and pressures that they have that Joe Blog's public would not have?

Well, basically my theory is that once we got social media and like I said before about, you know, that our previous stars used to be very separate, they used to be able to control their image, control the stories that came out about them.

Now, obviously in the past, royals or any kind of celebrities, of course they were, you know, they weren't the most moral people that lived on the.

What they might have been, but they might also not have been.

But a lot of times the things that they did in their private life were managed and were sort of, you know, kept out of the public eye in one way because they, you know, had great big PR teams, but in the other way, I think that, you know, to destroy that illusion would have been something that people didn't really want back in the 50s.

So now we have no barriers and now they live their life completely in the public eye, but also as the last remaining kind of real, pure other celebrities, if you know What?

I mean, celebrities that are on an other plane, so these, they still live in palaces.

They still have, you know, they have this mystique about them, and more than that is because they're born into a role, they'll.

They regenerate.

So there's always a new generation of royals to follow.

And with that, there seems to be.

It's very interesting, there's increasing interest in them, not decreasing, even though you would.

You might argue that, you know, in modern days, you know what.

Why would anybody be interested in the Royal family?

But that's not how it's going.

In fact, you know, it's.

You wait till Prince George is 18 and Lilibet, you know, there's going to be an American princess, which America probably hasn't entirely woken up to yet, but they're going to have their own princess, you know, and the interest in them will never go away.

So it's massive pressure on them.

I mean, who would want that?

I can't.

Nobody.

You know, it's a very unique pressure and they have to live with that and then navigate all their own personal relationships, you know, in a way that.

In the best possible way.

They don't.

Obviously, depending on which member of the family you're thinking about, they either try to do it with the Queen, which was, you know, never, never explain, never complain with her attitude, her mantra, or they might go full Prince Harry and put all the washing, dirty washing on the line for everyone to see and go, no contact and everything else.

And, you know, so, yeah, they have all the same family dynamics, but it's an enormous challenge how to navigate it.

Yeah.

And I'm also thinking as well, you've got this.

You're born into a role and there is a huge responsibility with it, particularly if you're the firstborn.

We're going to bring in primogeniture here.

You're the firstborn.

You've got the responsibility of the nation.

You've got the kind of.

The practical, dare I say, business responsibilities of properties, estates, the people who live on them and who work on them.

There is very much a sense that you are.

You've been handed the baton of history and then you need to steward it and then hand that on again.

So you've got that, which would just be huge in any family, and then all the pressure of the publicity on top of that.

No, so.

Yes, but they're all.

Yes, but then, interestingly, it's also slightly.

Imagine if you were in your family, if the firstborn was like, you know, they're Destined to take over the family business and you're like, oh, okay, that doesn't seem super fair.

And then, not only that, but they get all, you know, all the land and all the, you know, the title that comes with loads of land and loads and money, financial gain.

And then you're the.

Whether you're the spare heir or further down the line, you.

Of course they're not.

No, you know, they're not left short, but it's not really fairly.

It's not a normal situation where you might all go into the business, you might be a working royal, but you've been brought up in the spotlight and then, you know, and then basically there is, depending how far down, there is also a sort of attitude of like, well, get on with it then, you know, if you go.

So it's a.

It's a difficult thing to wrap your head around.

So it's interesting, I heard a fascinating argument the other day, which was talking about why primogeniture drove the economic success of late medieval Tudor and even early modern England.

Because all the finances and all the responsibility, the land would go to number one, which would mean that unless number two or three went into the priesthood, it was very much, you have to make your own way in the world and that will be known from a very young age that it's over to you.

We'll catch you if you fall, maybe, but you need to make your way in the world.

Which led to this kind of class group of sort of quite ambitious entrepreneurial younger siblings, men, obviously, who would say, right, well, I'm not going to get anything.

I'll make the most of all the training, the education and the connections I have being born into the family.

But.

But I have to make my way into the world.

I don't know, sort of.

I suppose I quite like that.

I quite like that sense of go forth and create good things and it's sort of from you, but.

Except some of them just became dissolute, didn't they?

Yes.

And didn't do that at all because.

They weren't prepared properly.

It was like, you go do that.

By the way, here's a potload of money.

Even though you got holes in your hands and a penchant for the ladies.

Yes.

So, I mean, exactly.

Like, even in history with, you know, you would be brought up to be, you know, you're in an aristocratic family, you've got titles, you've got grandeur, live in an enormous house, and then you have no money and.

No.

And you just supposedly get on with it.

And I can see that really difficult.

And even worse if you were female, because then you really.

You actually got kicked out.

You know, you just had to get married or just go away.

Yeah.

Frankly.

Bring back the convents.

Bring back the convent.

Kerry.

This is.

It all went wrong with the Reformation.

This is the last sort of remnants of that, isn't it?

You know, it's.

But it's.

Yeah, it's.

It's an interesting one.

I don't.

I. I mean, you have somebody like Princess Anne who decided right from the start she was, you know, the best queen we've never had.

She's absolutely.

No nonsense, gets on with it.

Work has been one of the hardest working royal for decades.

And she just, you know, realized her place.

She's a working royal, she does her job, she lives, she has a lovely home.

You know, she brought up a family, but she very much decided from the start that her children would be clear about what, you know, they are.

They're on the periphery of the royal family, but they're.

They, you know, she didn't give them titles and they were clear.

They had to make a living and they have done.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

To go forth and be successful on their own terms.

Yeah.

It's interesting as well, you mentioned earlier about how Queen Elizabeth was not expecting her side of the family were not expecting this responsibility, and that happened with Queen Victoria as well.

When William IV died, they went, what?

He has no children.

We've got.

Who are we going to pick?

And that.

That left Victoria.

And that must also be a hugely interesting dynamic table.

You have, you're aware, you're peripheral, you're part of this bigger picture.

But then to be thrust into the limelight and go, oh, I haven't quite had the preparation, the training for this, but this is what needs to happen.

That's another big pressure that must come about.

Yes, absolutely.

And so, you know, they.

I mean, the Queen's father was famously.

That's what the King's Speech is about, because he famously had a stammer and so, you know, he literally couldn't speak.

He didn't want to do it.

You know, he was.

And when he did take the throne, because of the massive scandal, I mean, we think we do have scandals now, we're going through another period scan royal scandal.

But I mean, think of the scandal of Edward, you know, the abdication and then after that, his, you know, basically colluding with the Nazis in the war.

I mean, it's just unbelievable.

I mean, you know, talk about royal problem.

So he and the Queen Mother were really.

Their whole mission was stability, stability, stability.

You know, they stayed in London during the war.

She would go and wear all her furs and her pearls and stand on the bombed ruins of the houses.

And people loved her for it because she wanted to show that they're not leaving.

You know, they're there for everybody, as incongruous as that sounds.

And so they instilled that in the Queen as well, that it just had to be all about stability.

And so we did have a period of.

Well, a long period of stability until we started getting in the 90s with all the divorces and Diana's death and everything.

But what do you think happened at that point?

Do you think it's kind of the pressure of the media, the spotlight on these young.

That pressure, still being encouraged to marry well, even though it wasn't necessarily the right person.

What, what.

It just.

It just all sort of falls apart a bit because Edward's the only one who stayed married.

He's been.

He's still married to Sophie, isn't he?

And the other three have all had divorce.

What.

What's happened?

I mean, Anne just, you know, married and then it didn't work out, and then married happily after that.

So it was just a sort of coincidence that it was all at the same time.

Diana.

Yeah, there was pressure on Charles to get married and obviously he.

He should have married Camilla right at the start, but the family times have changed massively since then.

And, you know, even when they did finally marry, they didn't.

They.

They had to marry in the Guildhall in Windsor because they were divorced, you know, so.

But now then, obviously, fast forward to Prince Harry getting married and he just had the full white wedding in St. George's Chapel, and it didn't matter that Meghan was divorced.

So things have completely moved on.

And I think a lot of those pressures that were put upon them have gone.

And so that was due to the time.

But, yes, I mean, it's a shame that that's.

That it's a terrible tragedy about Diana.

So.

And then with Andrew and Sarah, they were.

Yeah, there was a lot.

I mean, there was an enormous amount of pressure on them at the time, but leading to their separation.

But then again, you know, they.

Just.

The decisions that they have both made in their life in the past are now coming out with all the Epstein files and things like that.

So I don't know.

That's a, you know, it's an interesting thing about kind of how you decide to live your life and whether, whether you decide to live your life in a way that you hope you think will never be found out or you actually choose to live your life in a way that is, you know, wouldn't matter if someone found out.

They're two different things, aren't they?

So you need to choose between virtue and not virtue, even though the virtue can be harder.

I'm just thinking of, you know, things like temperance, prudence, which is hard.

It's hard.

I mean even, you know, normal people, we struggle with that.

But yeah, it's.

I think what's been very interesting the past few days with as you're saying these awful Epstein things is how light will shine in the darkness.

Might not be straight away, but you can't hide these things.

Ultimately they come out, dinner's burning, the washing's multiplying and someone's crying.

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Mean obviously in the past I suppose they stayed hidden but yeah, it's just everybody makes mistakes.

There's no absolutely, absolutely perfect person on the planet at all and no, no way, you know, and I don't, I don't think that there's a place for piling, piling on to people that do make mistakes either.

But I think we need to, you know, be more forgiving.

However, you know, I just.

What just reading all of the information that's coming out and know it, you know, about taking loans from a convicted pedophile right then and still going back for more money.

Well, you know, we can, I'm sure most of us normal people can reflect that.

No, we wouldn't have made that decision.

So, you know, there are decisions and decisions.

Yeah, it's thinking about sort of the secrecy around things.

I'm going to, I'm going to go back even further to the early 18th and then 17th century when you would have very, very little personal privacy for the royal family, particularly the King or the Queen because it was almost like the court, correct me, I'm just thinking back to my kind of days of studying history but have the King or the Queen at the centre of the court and depending on the power and the influence of the aristocracy around, they could have Roles, for example, helping the king out of bed of the morning, being the first person they saw helping them with their clothing, getting dressed.

There was a real kind of intimacy there.

So the more kind of trusted and powerful you were physically, you were very, very close to royalty.

So there's a lot of things there where you have very little privacy we cannot even conceive of.

No, it's, it's interesting.

If you go around, if you take a tour of any of the, of the palaces, like Kensington palace, the Old palace, part of Kensington palace, or Hampton Court particularly, you will see the, the flow of the room.

Seems, you know, you're like.

But I don't understand why, why are they so why do they all lead on from one another?

Why is there so many corridors?

And that's because the court, we can't hardly believe it now, but the court would be literally outside of the Queen's apartments or the King's apartments.

And so the king's, the, the monarch's apartments were sort of hidden in, within the palace.

And then there are all these anti.

Chambers outside which were packed with people.

And like you say, then they also had all of their ladies in waiting or their king.

The, you know, they're, they're the king.

What was it?

The master of the stool.

Yeah, of the stool.

So they, yeah.

To help them get dressed.

They knew.

But for those.

I just want to say stool.

We're not talking about something we sit on, we're talking about something that you get a sample of today to check your microbiome.

That's what we're talking about, that level of intimacy.

Yeah.

So they knew what was wrong with them.

They knew, you know, everything.

Yeah, they knew everything about them.

But then it was, you know, it's.

Yeah.

So it's an interesting thing because now we say they live their life in the public eye, but that was physically in the public.

But then a small amount of the public.

An accepted amount of the public.

Yeah.

So.

And, and you know, they would be.

You had to have the Home Secretary, I think, there at the birth of the, of a royal baby, right up to the Queen.

It was the Queen who said, I'm not having that.

Thank you.

I think, I think when she was born, they sat just outside of the room, but before that they were in the room checking that they hadn't done things like swap the babies or brought one in and things like that.

So.

Yeah.

Unbelievable.

Oh, just grim, Just grim.

This is quite.

Wow.

Yeah, you're giving up a lot.

And that's a lot of the Mentality to go, this is service, this is for the nation.

This is for.

It's like this utter sacrifice of self.

However, what there would have been would have been a sense of, I have a divine authority to be here, God has put me in this place and I have been given all this wealth and this privilege, and with it comes responsibility again, ideas of stewardship, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, that must have been a sucker for some.

By sucker, I mean support.

Not you're an idiot, different sort of sucker.

But yeah, that takes a certain sort of mind and character and disposition to.

I'm not sure anybody could really thrive in this, but to make a success of this and emerge with vaguely stable children that you could hand this on.

To, well, they didn't do, did they?

So, I mean, that's what the aim is constantly to achieve.

And I think, I predict that that will change more, you know, once William and Catherine take the throne and then the throne that George, if he does actually, if, you know, if he takes it, because I think it will change inevitably, I think.

And it wouldn't be, I think in the future, you know, it wouldn't be such a scandal if, you know, one of the heirs decided they didn't want to do it and passed it on to the other or something like that.

You know, I do feel that it's.

It will modernize in that way.

So it is almost like more of a business in that you are going, right, you actually have the gifts for this.

You have the temperament, you have the.

Yes, I want to do this and take it on.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, the way the crown passes is still to the firstborn, although the queen changed it so that it.

It now is the firstborn, not the first male anymore.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I can see that it would change and I can see that they would view it as very much a career, sort of a unusual career.

But they, I mean, they can.

If you want to do it, they can.

You know, it is still.

We're going through such a period of turmoil worldwide and.

And there is still an argument that, you know, when the king or William or Catherine come out, they can cross boundaries that we probably.

They, you know, don't have the same feeling that we do with our politicians, for example, they do do quite a good, you know, a lot of good internationally.

So they do.

There is a role for them.

But yeah, it would be.

It's going to be interesting to see how.

How it changes in the next sort of few decades.

And as well, they are bringing a stability in A world where we talked about celebrities earlier that, you know, celebrities are kind of gone within a generation.

Songs that were popular when we were teenagers.

Our kids aren't gonna know what they are, much less our grandchildren.

Whereas the royals have that.

That is that line of continuity running through.

Yeah.

I mean, what we've got now is we've got most of the biggest celebrities are.

You know, when it used to, we used to have Hollywood icons.

They've made way now for social media ones or YouTubers for the young, you know, for Gen Z.

So now they've chosen to do this, you know, so it's really interesting.

They've chosen to give away all of their privacy and they're for that future.

So, yeah, it is different.

So that's why I feel like the royals are the only kind of true celebrities left.

Yeah, no, it's an interesting.

It's an interesting one.

Just.

Same, same, but very, very different.

Yeah, very different.

Yeah.

I mean, God bless them, but not for all the tea in China.

No, thank you.

No, thank you.

Really hard.

Really hard.

Now, I have a question from all your kind of observing and writing about this.

Also I'd like to say for all the listeners that Terry has a podcast called Secrets of the Royals where she goes into sort of as almost case studies, you're looking at individual family members, some of the, well, secrets of the Royals.

So that'd be well worth having a listen to.

Again, I'll put all the details in the show notes, but because of your kind of breadth of observational experience for your Joe Bloggs public.

Mum, what is a good takeaway from the Royal family and what is a please don't ever do this takeaway you could give to the mothers listening?

Well, I think that the Princess of Wales has made it her mission to really try to promote early years, the early years of childhood education and support.

It's often people are like, oh, what?

You know, she's.

What is it?

What does that mean?

But what she's really trying to promote and it is actually really important is that you can build.

The building blocks of your child's life are made in the years before five and how nurturing and caring and reading to them and, you know, talking to them, building.

Building verbal skills and reading skills and all of those sort of things.

And mostly love, just showing them love and, you know, continuous love.

That how that actually will make a massive difference to your child's life.

And so I really feel people should pay more attention to that because it is actually super important in a period where a Lot of the services that we used to have, the community services that we used to have in those areas, you know, like the early childhood centers and midwives and things like that have gone.

So I do feel that she is saying something really important there.

I think the lesson, the lesson, the lessons I would try to unlearn would be things like basically, you know, don't, you know, don't show.

We've learned a lot since the Queen era of being a parent where they basically she just sort of went on a nine month tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Just left Charles, you know, goodbye darling.

Six months old or a year old or something.

I was just like, oh, wow.

Yeah, repeatedly as well.

She went, they, she used to go to Malta for Christmas when Philip was stationed there when Charles was a baby and just leave him, you know.

And it was, I mean it must have just been.

There was a bit of.

She wasn't supposed to travel with the direct air.

But also, you know, as soon as Charles and Diana had children, they stopped that and traveled with their children.

And then again William and Kate did too.

So I mean, yeah, like that's a good thing to have waved goodbye to that very cold parenting style where you just let your child get on with it and that's it.

And don't really give them love and that and don't listen to the kind of child they are which.

So Charles super struggled at school.

He was, I mean, I look at him, here we go.

This is like pop psychology.

But I mean with Charles, I look at him, I'm like, oh my gosh, what a sensitive chap who just needed kind of quiet books, a little bit of art.

He really should not have been sent to Gordonstoun where they were charging around like lunatics in the ice cold.

So Gordonston is one of the public schools, big premier boarding schools here in the UK up in Scotland and it was quite famed.

I don't know what it's like now, but it used to be sort of up at early morning in January and going for cold runs for five miles in the snow.

This sort of character building stuff which is what Philip, his father had had.

And.

He loved it.

He loved it.

But for Philip was interesting because his family had, when I say fallen apart because he was in some ways now.

Was his mother Danish?

No, his mother was Greek.

I can't remember.

But you probably remember better than I with Philip because his family were quite scattered and there wasn't the stability boarding school, you know, was that stability?

Yeah.

He basically didn't have any relationship with his parents.

And so he was a prince of Europe and he got sent.

He was.

All his sisters married Germans and then obviously the war happened.

So he, yeah, he was just sent to gordonstoun.

And he loved it.

He thrived on it, I suppose it gave him structure.

Yeah.

But interestingly, Andrew and Edward went there too and they, they were all right.

And it's just, yeah, it's about listening.

So that's, that would be an example is listen to the kind of child you have and which school, what kind of school that they would really thrive in.

That would be a good tip.

Yeah.

And then, I mean, other than that, I think, you know, I think that their, their parenting has changed.

Diana made a big, big point of parenting how she wanted because she was brought up in her, you know, she, she was brought up in a, in a family where she was pretty starved of.

Yeah, it was an awful divorce and all of this and it was, yeah, it was awful.

So she set about to do the opposite of that and so she would, you know, she, she parented, she, she would hug and kiss her boys and absolutely loved them more than anything in the world.

Took them to, you know, to theme parks and wanted them to have as normal childhood as possible and smothered them in love, which is so, you know, there's a great legacy.

So, I mean, yeah, parent like that.

But I don't know, I mean they haven't really.

Having said that, they haven't put the, the relationship Harry and William have you know, is completely, has completely fallen apart.

So it, like I say, it just comes back to they're just a normal family, really.

They're a normal family and as soon as people start getting married, you've got extra people to factor into the dynamics and things.

Things can change.

Things can change.

So, yeah, tricky, tricky, tricky.

Kerry, thank you.

You've given certainly me much food for thought, much to consider.

Where can people find out?

More people will go, I must know more about these royals.

And it's just very interesting.

And obviously the historian in me is like, they're just fascinating.

Where can people find out more about you and the work you do?

So the best.

We have a substack newsletter which is really popular, called the Royal List.

Three words.

I like that.

And so.

Yes, not a Civil War reference.

No, no, we're not.

No, we're actually, we actually bring you the curated Royal news every Sunday that you need.

So it's a list of, of Royal news from.

We're two journalists, it's myself and my, my co editor, Maria Cool.

And we're both experienced newspaper journalists, so you can trust what we write.

It's not clickbait.

Thank you.

So, yeah, you can read it there.

That.

That would be the best place to go.

And you've also.

You have a bit of a kind of.

From that.

Because the royal family have been around in various guises since what, Alfred.

So.

So we're talking 8th century here.

It's a long old time that has had quite an impact on the geography, the culture, the buildings of Britain.

And as a result, you've kind of expanded out into British travel, haven't you?

So that's.

I know that's another kind of pet passion of yours.

Where can people find out more about that side of things?

Yes.

So it sparked an absolute love of British heritage and also, you know, British history and heritage and the countryside, particularly because I'd lived in Australia for about 15 years and when I came back, I was just like, oh, my.

I just loved everything about it.

I couldn't get enough of the history.

So the British travel list is also.

Is the sister site to the Royal list on Substack as well.

So have a look there.

That's doing really well.

And we've got Instagram and Facebook pages on the same thing.

So I'm also, excitingly this year branching off that again and doing book travel.

British book.

Love it.

So, like, literary experience in, like, the places.

So I just came back from Yorkshire on the trail of Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights, which was just pretty much my dream trip, really.

Driving around the Yorkshire moors in the mist in January.

Pretty fab.

Love it.

I love it.

I mean, I lived in Australia for a while and I knew that I needed to come back to Europe.

I think the longest I was away was about 18 months.

Two things.

Number one, I went up to Sydney and in the rocks, which is like the oldest European part.

So box standard Georgian ones.

And I looked at them, I went, they're so old.

And I went, oh.

So that was the first thing.

And then I went to the Sing Along Sound of Music, which was great.

Opening scenes coming over Salzburg and the beautiful mountains and the old cathedrals and the buildings.

And I went, I think I need to go back.

The kangaroos are not enough.

I need more.

So, yes, I know that sense of longing for land, place, culture, history, and it all comes together.

It all comes together.

So.

Particularly for all the Americans who are listening, because I know you love this.

Can you just follow Kerry, please.

She's brilliant.

So.

Yes.

And I also do a big sideline in afternoon teas which is are extremely popular with my American readers.

I love them.

Yeah, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

Very civilized.

Very civilized.

Right ladies?

Because it's mainly ladies who are listening to this, let's be honest.

I want to say thank you so much for tuning in.

Could you please do me a favor like share, subscribe comments below.

Share this with anybody.

You know would love to hear a little bit more about the royal family and I'd be really grateful and just help this real life, real kitchen podcast gently grow.

So thank you so much, Kerry.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for having me.

Love the podcast and want to help keep the kettle on.

You can support the show.

Think of it like buying me a cup of tea or helping cover the cost of the biscuits.

You'll find the link in the show notes.

Thank you for keeping this kitchen conversation.