Royal Blues

IT'S QUITE A CAST of characters. Prince Charles and Princess Diana--the fairy the couple locked in endless quarrels. The rakish Prince Philip, disdainful of life in Buckingham Palace. His imperturbable wife, Queen Elizabeth II. The dour Princess Anne, lining up a TV interview to pay for her plane ticket to Australia. The family rogue, Prince Andrew, smuggling porn actresses into the palace when his mother leaves on holiday. Prince Edward, ever dumb and awkward.

To their fans around the world, the British Royal Family seems wholly unworthy of the decorum and severity that surrounds its every public move. People simply adore this bunch of misfits, and it's hilarious to watch crowds cheer the Queen's tiny wave, the Queen Mother's vacant smile, and Prince Charles' shyness as the troupe arrives at Ascot tin open carriages each summer.

Any Royal-watcher knows that there's more to these ceremonies than meets the eye. Ascot a horse racing festival created by Edward VII, gives most of the family a hefty dose of boredom. They all have to indulge the Queen's love for the ponies. Prince Philip, forcing a smile for the crowds, conceals a radio in his top had to listen to a cricket match, before disappearing backstage to catch up on work. Princess Diana complains about having to go. The Queen Mother slyly slips two pounds to a footman to wager on a horse. If the steed wins, the money goes to underprivileged children.

One can find a weal ht of such stories in Royal Secrets, the latest addition to the library of behind-the-scenes books published since he 1981 wedding made the Royals into a worldwide fad. These recollections of Stephen Barry, Prince Charles' former valet, tell about the Buckingham Palace staff, the exhaustive preparations for all forms of Royal ceremonies, and inside chatter about the sheltered, affluent lifestyle of the world's richest people.

But for gossip and scandal, there are many better places to look. For example, most of the above tidbits about Ascot come from a much newsier source, the classic 1983 Book of Royal Lists Barry, who apparently was fired by Princess Diana shortly after the marriage, pulls too many punches in this, the second volume of his memories of 15 years of laying out clothes for the Prince of Wales.

ROYAL SECRETS TAKES US step-by-step through the "downstairs" of Buckingham Palace, Sandringham, and the other Royal residences, dropping harmless chit-chat at every turn. Prince Philip, we harm, visits the kitchen regularly to berate the cooks. Prince Charles hung out there as a child, but by the time he reached 30 he had forgotten the way. Lady Diana, captive in the palace before her wedding, spent so much time in the pantry that The Yeoman of the Glass and China finally threw her out. "Through there is your side of the house. Your Royal Highness," he said, pointing to the door. "Through here is my side of the house."

Indeed, the staff--which number in the hundreds--often act like they own the place. Many exchange gossip with the Queen herself, though they wait until she's out of sight before boxing an unruly Royal baby on the ear (the young rascal Prince Andrew once got a black eye from an exasperated footman, but the Queen said nothing). Competition for prestigious jobs, like serving at state banquets, can be fierce, and the slightest brashness inevitably leads to a servant's being "sacked."

With their archaic titles--some are actually called "Coal Porters"--the staff indulges every whim and want of the Royals. Even the beloved Queen mother will send the cooks scouring the stores for fresh strawberries in December, laughing "it's just a little treat." Princess Margaret routinely kept the staff up to 3 or 4 a.m. until the Queen intervened, since they all had to be up at 7. But there are occasional moments of compassion: "Charles himself has often broken Royal habit by sometimes bathing the children," Barry notes. However, Charles' interest in child-rearing came in part because Diana had fired the longtime Royal Nanny.

The luckiest servants become condants of the Royals and move into stately country homes at their retirement. For the rest, life is hardly as nice. The family guards its millions, and Barry has included a chapter on "Royal Penny Pinching."

This section of the boom, which seems more than a little vindictive, tells of cheap Christmas presents (a butler was given his choice between blue or brown handkerchief), low wages, and enormous clothing expenses. The staff quarters in the family's private homes are woefully underfurnished; only at Buckingham Palace, where the government pays the bills, do the servants receive heat.

THOUGH BARRY ONLY HINTS at the reasons for his departure it seems that Princess Diana cleaned house after marrying the heir to the throne in 1981. All of Prince Charles' longtime servants--Barry joined the staff in 1967--disappeared in quick order. Diana had many problems adjusting, most of which were reported in the International Press. She fought incessantly with her husband, but Barry does his best to dance around these scenes. "Everyone at the Palace was worried that the fairy tale romance was going to collapse," he admits, but ultimately he tells little of specific quarrels-the type of gossip that Royal watches crave.

This failure to provide genuine inactive news leaves the reader feeling betrayed, Barry, who tries his readers by writing in sentence fragments, simply refuses to part with scandalous or embarrasing anecdotes, though he reminds us that he knows many. The closest we come is a scene of the Queen spreading newspaper over the carpeting of the Royal Train. It was for her prized corgis to use, in lieu of "walkies."

One wonders why Barry hold back, given the abruptness from the palace, and the constant complaints about the family's parsimony. Whatever his reasons, Royal Secrets comes off as a shameless example of profiteering, full of tidbits that Barry could just as easily have included in his first book, Royal Service. "I realized that I had more to say," he writes in the introduction, but Windsor fans are still waiting for him to tell all.