The Royals with Roya and Kate - The man who prepared William, Harry and Catherine for royal duty

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton is a former SAS soldier who became one of the royal family’s most trusted insiders – serving the Queen Mother, guiding Princes William and Harry through their early public lives, playing a key role in Prince William and Kate’s 2011 royal wedding, and later becoming godfather to Prince George.This week on The Royals, Kate Mansey and Roya Nikkhah speak to Jamie about what it takes to prepare young royals for public duty, and what he learnt about William’s future as king, Harry’s bond with the military and Kate's quiet confidence. And as the royal family becomes increasingly slimmed-down, what can his experience tell us about the challenges facing the next generation?Jamie's novel, Beyond the Edge of Light, is available from 9th July. You can buy a copy from The Times Bookshop, with a special discount for Times+ members.Got a question? Get in touch: [e-mail]: GettyProducer: Robert Wallace, Harry BlighExecutive Producer: Priyanka DeladiaRead more: Kate, Wills and Harry's confidant: the man who kept their secrets Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royals, the podcast where we discuss what happens behind the palace walls and why it matters. I'm Kate Manzi. And I'm Roya Nicar. What does it mean to live a life of royal service? And what does it take to guide young royals as they step into the spotlight of public duty? Well, that's the question at the heart of today's episode because our guest has seen the monarchy from an extraordinary vantage point. Jamie Lather Pinkerton began his royal career as a young equerry to the Queen Mother before becoming the first private secretary to the young Princess William and Harry.

Then he went on to work closely with William, Catherine and Harry as they stepped into more public royal roles and his even godfather to Prince George. He has seen the monarchy from the inside, across generations and very few people understand royal service better. Jamie, welcome to the royals. Thank you very much. Lovely to be here. It's astonishing to have you here.

We obviously want to ask you about your career. You've been with the Irish Guards, the SAS, and spent a long time in two different roles within the royal household. But there's a new thing, that's why you're here today, that you've added to your resume. You're now the author of a brand new novel, and it's called Beyond the Edge of Light. It's a World War II love story.

Tell us a bit about what made you become a novelist. Well, I've always been a diarist, so I like writing, and I was a sort of critical diarist and that I corrected my sort of copy, as it were, the next day. And so I thought about, gosh, seven or eight years ago that it would be fun to try and write a book. And actually my career sort of doesn't lend itself really to writing about it, having been in the SAS and then with the royal household. And I didn't really want to go down that route. When I was in my mid-20s, really before I left school, I'd read The Hobbit and Ned the Lonely

donkey, you know, they were my two great books. But actually, having gone into military service and having gone away for many months and many years at a time, I very much got into my reading then. And my favourite, this turns terribly pretentious books I always took away with me, with the Russian novelists. And... Low brow then, Jamie. Well, actually, actually, I think every brow, actually. You couldn't be more highbrow. You were in the Russian novelists. In a way, the sort of love story bit was the thing which sort of leapt out of me. And that's what I said. out to do when I was writing beyond the edge of light.

And Missy, the protagonist, who is a firecracker of a character, I think that's one way of describing here. She's based a little bit on your mother, isn't she? Yes. Tell us a bit more about that. The backstory of Missy is my mother's basically. My mother died at the age of, she was just off 100 a couple of years ago. So Missy's a little bit older than her.

But my mother had this extraordinary life growing up on the northwest frontier of India. And then she came home and was during the war, a motorcycle dispatch rider, but then went into the... the sort of secret world after the war. And none of us knew anything about this until I was in my mid-20s when mum sprang it on us one Christmas doing the knitting like Miss Marple in Suffolk. Imagine that. And there was a television program on and talked about who was the fifth man.

And somebody said it must have been Sir Roger Hollis at which my mother said, absolute nonsense. He was total gentleman. And both Sarah and I looked at her as though she was mad. And that was the first time we ever knew she'd been anywhere here that life. So Missy is based on her. And Mrs. Firecracker, fiercely independent, very brilliant character actually, operating in the secret world and all of that sort of thing. Missy is at Bletchley.

My mother was in MI5. So I can say I kind of know this person rather than woman, man, better than anybody else. There's another interesting link with your, you mentioned your service in the SAS and bringing some of that into it. And there's another link because a lot of the book is set in Germany. And, of course, you were in Germany as a young man in your 20s. serving in the Irish Guards, when you first got the tap on the shoulder, turned to the royal household. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, I mean, just from the sort of German point of view, the male protagonist is an East Prussian. He's a very principal German. He, what in the old days, would have been called, a good German, virulently anti-Nazi, and they meet before the war. This is Conrad. He's part of the German aristocracy,

the main kind of male character in it. Yes, and he's sort of East Prussian aristocracy, military aristocracy, I mean, to a degree, impoverished aristocracy, but he's caught, basically, as many people were. And when I was in Germany in my early 20s, and I'll come on to the sort of tap on the shoulder, I had the great good fortune of knowing a few German families like that.

And there was one particular man who had been brought up in East Prussia, regular soldier before the war, definitely a good German, who I used to go and have lunch with and talk about these things very openly. And I suppose if he's based on anybody, he's based on that individual. But he's an amalgam, too. A lot of my SAS mates come into his character as well.

But yes, no, I mean, I got the tap on the shoulder when I was in the bottom of some trench on the North German plane and the wind was howling. And I was trying to get my headphones on and listen to what my company commander was shouting at to me. And I suddenly got this message to a sort of report to his armored vehicle. And then he said, you go back to barracks

and they want to see you in London. Got back to London. And the queen, I went had lunch for the queen mother. And what was that like? And what did she want? She wanted you to start as an equerry? Yes, I think I was sort of slightly on interview process, although you didn't sort of feel it at all. But she was, as she's portrayed, except in the Crown, which makes me livid because she was one of the cleverest people I've ever come across and was the sort of glue to hold everything together. But she was so wicked and fun. And she challenged me at my first lunch to see, she said, to see if I could flick a pee into this incredible. ornate chandelier, which was over there, which I sort of ummed and ard.

And she said, well, that's what we always used to do when we were little at glams, you know. And so I was made to feel incredibly relaxed. Part of the family from the start. Yeah, part of the family. And that never stopped. I mean, she was an incredibly fine person, actually. And what was it like being in a quarry for her? I mean, what was the day-to-day role other than peaflicking chandeliers?

It was pretty cushy. I mean, it was run like a, it was quite a sort of privileged person. position in the sense of having a window on what an Edwardian household would have been like. I mean, she had surrounded herself with people who had served her for many years, but had done amazing things, and they'd all been through the war. Her private secretary was a guy called Sir Martin Gilliott, single man who adopted the Aquarius as they came through. And he became his surrogate grandson. And he'd been, I think he was the adjutant of colditz.

You know, he'd escaped from umpteen prisoner of war camps, caught in a German freighter and a Swedish port on one occasion, caught swimming the danube on another. So you've got people like that. It's no wonder that she was, I mean, she did it herself, obviously. She was a great, great person. But to be underpinned by those sort of people was extraordinary. But it was run like, I mean, think downtown Abbey on steroids. It was like that.

But really relaxed and lovely. And everybody, from the very hierarchical, from the bottom to the top, everybody adored her. What was life like then? What did you actually have to do? Because I imagine there were lots of lunches. you know, after that initial, did you pass the peat-flicking test? It seemed to have passed. And you were invited back to lunch?

I was invited then to sort of join. The day for the Aquari was, you know, having come from, I think I'd just been on a tour in Northern Ireland, you know, and she always said to Martin. Now, Martin, you're not to overwork the Aquary because he's having a break from being out there defending us. How old were you at this day? I was about 22 or something.

She encouraged you having parties as well, didn't she? Yeah. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah. We were saying goodbye to my predecessor. It was about two months after. It was the night before the Queen's birthday parade, before trooping the colour.

Wow, okay. And it was one time in the year that I had to get into that really high collar, sort of red coat, skin, all the rest of us and the Irish guards. And we took our predecessor out, and we had a really good evening, about sort of half a dozen of us. And in the end, you know, it was three o'clock in the morning. And the only place in London, which I was aware of that had booze at three o'clock in the morning was the Aquarius room at Claren's House.

So we went back there. The party went on and on. And in the morning, I turned up, and Martin was furious because I was sort of 15 minutes late, and I was sort of green from the neck up. And as I was getting in, he said, I'm not going to mention it to the Queen Mother this time, but, you know, you just behave yourself in future, you know, etc., etc. Anyway, I was helping her into her carriage outside the front door of Clarence. She turned around and said, Jamie, did you come party here last night?

Which I said, well, I'm terribly sorry. I really hope we didn't wake you up like this. She said, no, it doesn't matter. But I wish you'd have more parties. She has become so immortalised, for better or for worse, for worse you think in the crown. Perhaps I think she's portrayed in a slightly sort of silly way in the crown. Actually, she was fiercer and sharper. As someone who worked with her and knew her in the way that you did,

and you talked about her being the glue of the royal family, what was it about her that was so significant to the royal family then and still now? because the king now still always refers back to his grandmother as being a very important person in his life and actually to the fabric of the institution. And of course came into it not thinking she was ever going to take on the role as Queen Elizabeth as she became after the abdication. What was it about her that made her fierce, successful, soft, canny at the same time?

I think in part it was her upbringing. And by that I don't mean living in a grand castle in Scotland. I mean the fact that her doored elder brother was killed in the First World War when she was 15 or 16. nursing sclams was turned over to be a military hospital during the war and helping to nurse the wounded soldiers through that. So very early on, she got a perspective on what matters in life and that sort of shone through all the way through.

She was brilliant, brilliant reader of people. I mean, that's what I would say. She could sum somebody up and I don't mean an unpleasant way, but she could really get to the bottom of what people's fears and weaknesses were and reassure them. and this thing. A story which I hope my wife doesn't mind me telling, but she was also incredibly loyal to her Aquarius as we were to her, but we would get invited back to the castle of May, you know, really ad infinitimate. This is up in Scotland. Yeah, Susie and I stayed with her

there the summer before she died, for instance, which was long after I stopped being a query. And if Martin heard you were in London, then you got invited to go and have lunch and catch up and that's the thing. And I come back from the SAS at one point, and I was invited to go and have lunch with her and I was just engaged to my wife and we went um I went there I told queen mother and she said oh you must come to the castle of May for your honeymoon and my wife was 24 years old not quite the romance you know and I just organized us I'd sort of emptied the piggy bank and I got this sort of thing lined up for us to go and do and I thought well man it's very kind of you but and she said well come for the last four or five days you know because I you've just you know

I know you've got four or five days at the end of it so we turned up and we went to Wick in Scotland where you get invited in her days again the Edwardian household you know we please turn up a tea time on such and such a day and leave after breakfast on such and such a day and anyway the only flights to Wick ended up with us Susie and I with Susie with a terrible tummy eight poor thing on Wick Harbour eating fish and chips waiting for three hours for the shiny Land Rover to come across the moors and pick us up and take us the Castle

of May when we got to the Castle of May little character and a blue raincoat with lots of corgis around her she's came running across and said, hello, low, low. And she could I have a quick word with Susie? And she put her arm with Susan and wandered off into the middle of the grass in front of May. And they were chatting away and came back. And when, you know, we were put in, you know, good Edwardian stuff, even though we were just married,

Susie in one grand double bed and me in a little side room. You're joking. With an adjoining door. So straight out of, you know, good stuff. Did she give your wife a pep? Well, yeah. I said, what did she say? And she said, I know how you're feeling.

And you don't have to see me again this week if you don't want to. You know, you can get up whatever time you like. And you don't have to see me again if you feel better on it. And of course, Susie adored her and joined in. And she was just that, I know it's a sort of, you know, the grand thing to say about Queen Elizabeth, which sums her up was, you know, that Hitler called her the most dangerous woman in Europe.

And, you know, you can't say better than that. There's a sort of tick in your CV. She was just brilliant, brilliant at reading people and encouraging people. Did she love a drink as much as we were. No, no. She was very, she was very, she loved a drink like we all do. But I know as the martini mixer. That was your official role, was it? That was my official rule.

That was about the most onerous thing that I had to do as a query was to make the martinis before dinner. And how did she like them? Well, the martini, which I still mixed today is hers, which is seven parts, eight parts, gin to one literally a sort of dusting, you know, you just hold the bottle of vermouth over the top of it and lots of ice. But actually, you know, she wanted everybody to have a really good party. So I was making jugs of this stuff and taking it around, having lots of them myself. But when it came to her, you would give her one and she was like, I just love a little bit more ice, a little bit more ice. So she had a martini before dinner. But everybody else had about ten. Several. Right. That's interesting.

So she was, again, that's a misportrayal. She was very cany. So in two years, you must have met other members of the Royal Family while you're there as well. She would have come into contact with Princess Diana. Yes, absolutely. I remember the only time I did was in those days when the Royal Yacht was around. I used to go around on the, I think it was called the Western Isles tour. This is Britannia. Yeah.

And everybody would get off and you'd have nice lunch and the whole family would be there. And I sat next to the Princess of Wales for the two years I was there. And she was great. I mean, we had a real laugh. Because actually, although Queen Elizabeth's friends were very, very young at heart, so, you know, you'd find mid-80s, I was 22 or whatever, and I'm probably the only person there under 70 or 80. But they were sort of Battle of Britain pilots.

They were Sir Frederick Ashton. They were these sort of amazing people. So it was all good fun, but it was rather nice to meet somebody. Someone else young at heart. So beautiful and nice, you know, sitting next to you for lunch. And what was you? I don't remember what was she like, kind of in those early days. She was incredibly nice.

I mean, I can't claim to have known her. But certainly on those occasions I did meet her, she was just real fun. Yeah, real, real fun. Coming up. William given a fair wind, I think he will be a great king, capital G. And he's got the time to do it too. But with Harry, you know, he's... After being Martini Mixer number one.

Yeah, the only one, actually. The only one. After being a highly accomplished martini mixer, you went back, obviously you continue with the military service because you're on succumbent. But then you came back in the royal households because you went to work for William and Harry. How did that come about? Because they were setting up their own private office for the first time. Yeah, I mean, it was 2004 or five, I think. And I was contacted and asked if I, because they both wanted to go in the army, whether I knew of any ex-military people who were coming.

out of the army, out of the SAS specifically, because, you know, like good lads that they were, they didn't necessarily want in a private secretary. They were very sweet and welcomed me, hugely, but at the age of 19 and 20, you kind of don't want that sort of thing. So to sweeten the pill, the very canny person who asked me to look out of it, said, can you get hold of the SAS Association, find out whether anybody's leaving it? And they came back and said, not really. And so the person said, well, what about you? And I just thought, hang on to me, you know, This is, I've been sort of 20 years out of the... You've been off smashing drug cartels and Columbia and all sorts of things with the SAS.

I'd been, if you mean I've been a military service. Yes, sorry, you can't have that. That's a special line, Jamie. Yeah. My great mate, Charlie McGraw, who was Brian McGrath. He was the amazing private secretary to Prince Philip for all those years. And he said, hang on a mate. You know, hang on on me, Pinky.

What's this all about? This could be really fun and really interesting. And it's really because of Charlie sort of telling me pull my socks up and get on with it that I did it. And I was very grateful to him because it was an amazing experience. So you became their private secretary when they formed their own private household

away from Buckingham Palace, their own unit. What was the role there? What was your job, to sort of help them and assist them into transition from school, military, into public life? Yeah, I think so. I think that's what it was. It was quite interesting.

coming to the job without having been a soldier where, you know, the first thing you ask is, what is the aim, what is the end state? Yeah. What are the way points? What's the plan? And there wasn't any, actually. A very nice man called Sir Michael Pete, who was the private secretary to the Prince of Wales, as he was there, sort of handed them over to me, was always very supportive.

And I'm eternally grateful to him, actually, because he didn't tell me how to do it at all. There was no instruction whatsoever. So I was sort of scratching my head thinking, this is very different to even the good old SAS, which is pretty freewheeling in that sense. And so we developed our own plan, you know, between us with the two princes and myself and the wonderful Helen Asbury, who was kind of the personal private secretary. And the plan was largely for you to help facilitate their work or their careers within the military. Yes, it was. And their personal life. Navigate all those things that you have to do when you're in your early 20s, trying to establish a career.

I mean, Helen was the one for their personal life. And, you know, the last thing they want is some ex-armie officer trying to advise them on things. I have just about worked out my own personal life, and so I wouldn't have been any good at it. What did I think? I mean, my father, who is an Irish chap, always had this great expression,

which was to get it right in here, pointing at his chest. I remember him sort of saying it. And so later in life, you can say, we have known the days, which is that wonderful Irish expression. And actually that's what I kind of felt that my time with them was all about. I mean, they knew where this thing was going on train tracks.

They were incredibly accepting of it, very good on the duty side. But it was very important to my mind that they should be allowed to express themselves and to hit their own personal goals when they were young men in their 20s, as I had been allowed to. And if you're going to be a soldier, then... As they both were. As they both were. You can't just do the training bit. And I remember that.

very clearly for my own time sitting on the North German plane, highly trained, but never, thank God, never going to go to war to test it out, which is part of the reason I went to the SAS so that you at least have your operational tick. And I thought that was really important for them, hence the reason of Harry going on operations in Afghanistan. And William, ultimately coming up himself with this brilliant idea because I was desperate to get him to Afghanistan And I'm quite right, too. I was being slapped down by everybody who could ever reach me, you know, because I thought, you know, as the future commander in chief,

to be able to look your soldiers in the eye, or airmen or Marines or sailors, and say, I've known the days would make a hell of a difference. And, of course, it became difficult, but he came up with this brilliant, brilliant plan, which was to join the Search and Rescue Force. And, you know, you can look anybody in the eye if you've been out into the Irish Sea and a Force 9 or 10. taking somebody off a mountainside with your rotor blades three feet from the cliff face. And it's a clever thing because it's completely upends the objections to him going to these places,

which that he might endanger people around him because of his profile. Of course, everybody is reliant on the captain, the pilot of an aircraft to keep them safe. So it was perfect and he was brilliant at it and he's now known the days. That's a really interesting example of the fact that you were working with, the new, still very close to two princes who were right from their birth and all the way through on different paths. Harry able to eventually get to Afghanistan for two tours because he's not the air. William, as much as he wanted to go, not able to go because he is the air. How sort of alive to that did you have to be when you were working with them about those two different roles?

Was it something that sort of played into the day-to-day? How did you navigate that? I mean, I was lucky to be doing the private secretary job when they were both adventurous young men, and they weren't at the red box stage of the private. I mean, I'd have been crap at the red box being going in every morning and doing this. Others would be so much better at that sort of thing than me. So I suppose my task in a way was easier. It was to enable them to fulfill their own goals. So they felt better about life going forward.

That was my, I suppose if I put it in a nutshell, that's what I'm. I was trying to do. Now, of course, as part of this as I was, we had to get them used to going on overseas tours and to being interested in the charitable side, didn't need much pushing there. You know, they were definitely sort of leading that one, leading me through all that one. I didn't know anything about it. And they, of course, had that with their mother and father all the way through. So there were other elements to it. But for me, the main effort, as we would say in the military, was that thing of getting it right in here for them during their 20s. When you look at, you know, having been one of the few people who worked so closely with

William and Harry at a formative age, when you look at, you know, the stories now about the fact that they don't talk, that there's a riff between them. Is there anything you're able to say? I think it's difficult for me to talk about that, if I'm honest. I'm sorry to, sorry to disappoint on that one. But I, you know, I'm very, very fond of both of them. I think they are, I, I, I I really loved them actually when I work for them. And I still do, actually. I think William is like the Lion King. I always thought of him as the Lion King sitting on his rock, you know,

and sort of slightly beneficent smile on his face with Harry roaring round and round circles at the bottom of the rock. Lion King, Harry's favourite musical, knows all the words. Yeah. He told me that once. Well, there you go. And so I think he's pretty amazing. He's got this sort of moral compass, which I keep using this expression, but it's sort of rusted at due north,

and he's very good with people. He'll be a great king, given a fair wind. I think he will be a great king, capital G, and he's got the time to do it too. But with Harry, you know, he's, I mean, you know, we love Harry because he's a sort of 18th century aristocrat cavalry officer like you, Roy, riding hellful leather across jumps all over the place. But he was a really good soldier,

and his soldiers loved him. And that for me, and it would be for me, wouldn't it, being an ex-soldial myself, is a huge test of what somebody's really like. And I think actually his loyalty has never wavered when it comes to, it has wavered in other ways. And I'm not going to dress this up. But in terms of his soldiers, you know, within Victus and this sort of thing, it stayed very true. And I'm ever the optimist. And that's how I better put the full stop, I think. Ever the optimist.

Well, I think that's a good moment to move on to another very important member of the royal family, you were there from right at the beginning in terms of her stepping into public life and that is of course Catherine, Princess of Wales. Then Kate Middleton, as she was, when you first met her. You and I have talked a lot about that role,

what you did with her in terms of helping navigate these very early days. But this is someone who was at university out of the public eye, came into public life in quite a full-on way as a teenager, we know, with William.

What was it like helping to navigate that role for her in the very early days? Well, I mean, I think in the very early days, again, it was one of those occasions where Helen Asprey and others were much more involved. There was no handholding because I don't think she's the sort of person who needs that, actually. I think it was a hell of a shock and all that sort of thing because it's a very different environment. But he kind of picked well. That's the bottom line.

She's an amazing person. And she is, actually. She really is. I think, you know, if you had trolled the country, left, right, north, south, etc., you wouldn't have found anybody better than her. And it's quite difficult to spot that early on. We've all been through this with our marriages. You know, it's not always, everything's not always firm when you get married.

You have to take a punt. You once said to me she had, you felt that the way she'd navigated her public life, I think a lot of people have underestimated Catherine and thought she's very much. She plays second fiddled to William. people who know her always say they're a partnership. You once said to me, you compared her to the Queen Mother and said she had ice running down her spine. I think so.

Why do you, why do you think that? I think, I know, I suppose it's slightly odd choice of words of mine, but I don't mean ice in a sort of heartless ice way. No. I think she's tough, you know. My goodness, she's been through enough. And I think she's... We've seen that, haven't we, in the last two years even?

Oh my goodness. The other thing she did, let me take it back a bit. With the princes doing that, particularly that, charitable side. It was always very, very important when they were doing Invictus, when they were doing the various projects and themes which the Royal Foundation picked up, that they didn't, you know, cross that divide and become preachy about stuff. Because often they were, you know, coming to something quite cold and there were great experts around. So they were able to convene and get the real experts talking to one another, etc. Now, there were exceptions to that in that, you know,

with something like Invictus, for instance. And actually, this goes for William as well as Harry. You know, they're both able to talk knowledgeably and with credibility because they have been on operations. And I go back to that point I was making before. And so at that point, you can stand up and express your own views on things. If you've been in the back of a transport aircraft

coming back from Afghanistan with bodies of people who have tragically been killed in action, then you can talk about that sort of thing. And I think where Catherine, was really, really good. Because she's brilliant on this sort of early years side of the house. But for many, many years, she was just very, very carefully accruing the knowledge, talking to people, convening people, under the radar, no exposure, this sort of thing.

So that actually when she decided that that was a theme line she wanted to pursue, she really went for it, but in a staged way. So actually when she did emerge from the long grass, you know, actually, people who were the experts in the field were saying this person knows a hell of a lot about what she's talking about here and she spent eight years or however long it was with us getting to know it and i think that shows shows the sort of person we're talking about you know you were right there from the start weren't you i mean when they got married that 2011 royal wedding there hadn't been one for so long you were right at the heart of it and you know even your son played a role tell us a bit

about what that was like yeah it was well it was very exciting and actually they very much cool the shots at their wedding. But it was fun being the sort of chief of staff of it. You know, I left the army as a major with my 60s-men or whatever it was. And that was about as far as... But if I'd had another aim in life, it would have been to have been a sort of a swash-buckling divisional commander with 12,000 armored vehicles and my silk scarf flying in the wind.

The closest I ever got... I can see it now. The closest I ever got to divisional command was that wedding, I think, because it had so many component parts. And I mean, it was really interesting because it was one of those occasions where in life it's great to be part of something really first class in terms of professionalism.

And you had people who did media villages, you had the metropolitan police who had it absolutely tied down as to how to do something which they were dusting off the books, etc. You had the church side of it, you had the security side of it, you had the diplomatic side of it,

you had the whole lot. But it was really fascinating. We had these big sort of meetings every, every sort of two weeks to begin with, and every week, I think, in the last two months or so, with me sitting as the sort of chairman of it. But saying, you know, literally male getting through, boots fitting, anybody got any problems, and all these geniuses just reporting back on their own things. So in terms of sort of the leadership of that process, it was the couple who were leading it and giving us the strategic direction about where they wanted to go. With me as a sort of rusty cog in the middle, but actually, you know, having to do. very, very little, just give the sort of main strategic direction. I'm laughing because this is classic Jamie, very, very modest.

He's the man who orchestrated the Royal Wedding in 2011. And he's just sort of saying, this is interesting, isn't it? Because you're so at the heart of the Royal Family. You know, you then became godfather to Prince George. It's very hard to see anybody who's got that path. When we taught a courtiers and people in and around the palace, you have friends and you have staff, you've bridged that gap. Obviously it wasn't your intention to sit out to do so,

but you are part of the furniture. I mean, I think a lot of it is down to when I did it. And, you know, I've quite often said that I think I was the only private secretary who on the sort of job description needed to be able to ride a trial bike over the mountains in pursuit of these boys were very good on a motorcycle I used to add.

So it was that sort of private secretary bit. So it was having to not be, too courtier like. You needed to be a sort of a companion to them. I don't say a friend because I think it would be it's not the right thing to do to be a sort of friend friend.

So they were very sweet and used to ask me to go sort of shooting with them and this sort of thing. And I never did that because I think that would have been crossing a sort of... Too close. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, absolutely afterwards, you know, not a problem and that's the thing, not that I did. But they very sweetly asked me to other things. but not at the time but I do think it was helpful for me that I was not the red box type of private secretary so you could sort of

and as a result I mean there were other people who Christopher Gite who was the Queen's private secretary and Robin Janvrin before him we had Robin on the podcast a few weeks ago I mean you know those two people are I mean fantastic characters who just also led with a really light reign

when they were the boss of the households and they were the boss of the household whatever one says about the Lord Chamber and you know they were they were the guys who ran the show. And they understood that. You know, it was, we know that you're not doing this as a sort of normal private secretary.

You're doing it as a sort of, I don't know what, but you know, something different. You are seen as a very safe, steady pair of hands for the royal family. You've worked for the Queen Mother. You worked with William and Harry. I love that your son, Billy, was a page boy at William and Catherine's wedding.

And then many years later, who's the safe pair of hands that's looking after the page boys before the coronation? it's you behind the scenes. You're part of the thread that runs through decades, actually, of the royal family. So you've seen, from a very interesting vantage point, a little bit of evolution of how it's emerging in modern times.

You've talked about the fact that you see the sort of gradual change in the royal family as evolution on a revolution, which is a phrase that William uses to, I wonder where he got that from. What do you think is a sort of thread that runs through that keeps this machine still going and still popular, because despite growing questions which we've talked about, the Royal Family, a lot over the last few episodes, the majority of people in this country

still want to retain a constitutional monarchy. How do you see it as evolving at the moment and into the future? I mean, I think the key word is the sort of relevance bit. And I think the institution of monarchy has been probably the most successful corporate institution, whatever you want to call it, really in history. I mean, certainly through the last thousand years and being able to, I know it's had its hiccups of people losing their head and things,

but I think the, you know, the bottom line is that it's had this chameleon ability to adapt and to fit the circumstances at the time. It's had a big base, you know, it's had a big diaspora royal family. So, you know, the people like the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Kent's and particularly the Princess Royal, to my mind, they cover the national landscape and the national sort of psyche. if you like, perhaps to a few millimeters deep, but the work ethic that they've put into this,

and the Edinburgh's too, you know, I'm sort of, I don't want to leave anybody out now, but they've been an extraordinary ability for what is an incredibly important part of it, which is touching the whole national psyche. And then this diaspora family really roaring around the country, doing the monarchs bidding, really. And I think if you have that base,

then you can start to adopt the Tudor model, which is what always is. interested me, which was picking the moment to really get out there and make an impact. And what's the future moment going to look like? What do you think the future look? Well, this is the thing. I mean, if I'm, if I'm being honest, I think my worry is, you know, the ability to do that with quite a sort of narrow base because I think that sort of relevance thing is, is promulgated in quite a major degree by the huge work ethic of a wider royal family. So do you worry, as the family is streamlined, that'll be harder to do?

Yeah, I worry actually that just for the effort of the individual's concerned, as well as the monarchy itself. In what way? Because they'll be so busy. Right. You know, in order to... Too much for too stretched. Too much for too few. Yeah. But having said that, I know that a lot of thought has gone into this, and I think we'll be surprised at how they deal with it.

There's a lot of innovative minds looking at this. So I don't think my worries should be something I don't sleep over. Well, we can talk to you all day. and I'm sure we'd love to but that's all we've got time for this week. Thank you to Jamie Lather Pinkerton for joining us. Thank you for having me.

And Jamie's debut novel, as we said, Beyond the Edge of Light is out now and it is a wonderful read. So if you've enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe to the Royals wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube on the Times Royals channel.

And please rate with you and share the show because it really does help others find us. Until next time, Thank you for joining us on the Royals and we'll see you next week.