• Power and the Palace by Valentine Low (Headline Press, September 2025)

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society Production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And we're delighted to be joined for this special edition of the pod by Valentine Low, former Royal correspondent of The Times, who's written a new book about the relationship between Downing Street and the Palace.

It's full of fascinating anecdotes about how kings and queens have clashed with their prime ministers over the years as the. Powers of the monarchy have perhaps receded a bit, but its place in public affection has remained fairly solid. Valentine's book is called Power and the Palace, and it's published by Headline Press. And Valentine, the first thing I wanted to ask you about was that very point, the power of the monarchy is a [00:01:00] great deal less now than it used to be in the period. You start this book with Queen Victoria's reign. Queen Victoria was quite keen in intervening in British foreign policy, not least because Britain was often dealing with heads of states who were very close relatives of hers.

Valentine Low: Yeah, it's fascinating and it's the reason why I wanted to write the book because I wanted to understand how Queen Victoria was so politically active, meddlesome you might say, and how we got from there, to Queen Elizabeth II, who went out of her way to remove herself from politics or in the phrase of a private secretary, to be above politics.

And yeah, Victoria expressed opinions about who her prime ministers should be. She tried to get ministers sacked. One particular bugbear of hers was Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary, a very prominent foreign secretary who could have wanted to get on with the business of being foreign secretary. And she wanted to insist that all messages to ambassadors which went out in her name should go through her and things like that. And he thought that was a [00:02:00] frightful interference with Foreign Office business and used to just not do it.

Mark D'Arcy: He forgot.

Valentine Low: Yeah, he forgot. Exactly. And made excuses. And this used to enrage her and she tried to get him sacked. She failed. Full transcript →