The kitchen is the heart of many homes—it's where many kids do their homework, where friends gather for a quick cup of coffee, where families cook and eat together. But for the Queen, the kitchen is apparently a room that is best left unvisited.
A source told Express in 2018 that the monarch couldn't comprehend the amount of time that Prince William, Kate Middleton and their three children—George, Charlotte and Louis—spend in the kitchen of their home at Anmer Hall, in Norfolk. "When the Queen visited the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Anmer Hall for the first time, she couldn’t get her head around the fact that the kitchen is the main base for them," the source said.
"For the Queen, she can't stand that, because she is used to having a set room for that sort of thing."
If you're wondering why someone's grandma cares which room of the house her grandson spends the most time in, yes, it does seem to have something to do with social standing. "The kitchen she never goes down to when she’s at Balmoral, for instance," the source explained. "In her mind, that is where all the kitchen staff work."
I'm glad to hear that the Cambridges are happy to lead a bit more of a normal life than other royals, because imagine not being able to spend downtime in your own kitchen?!
For the source, part of the explanation for this preference of theirs is that they have significantly fewer staff members than the Queen does. "Of course, they have their help: the nanny and the housekeeper," they added. "However, they don’t have the same level of staff as Prince Charles or the Queen." Well, then.
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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.
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