Why Harry was a fool to pick a fight with ‘this woman’
...that’s what it’s claimed he called the Queen’s most trusted confidante – with shocking double standards over snobbery
Prince William, Angela Kelly was in no position to defend herself.
She may have a reputation for toughness among Palace belowstairs staff – it was they who dubbed her AK-47, an amusing play on her initials and the firepower of the Soviet-era assault rifle – but this time she could not answer back. It is hard to believe that Harry, who used to have a reputation for being kind and courteous to royal servants, did not know that.
He must also be fully aware that both his father Prince Charles and mother Princess Diana had fiery tempers which, on occasion, they both lost at times with staff who depended on them for their livelihoods. Whatever the truth of this undignified situation – and make no mistake there was some kind of encounter between the sixth in line to the throne and the Queen’s right-hand woman – it placed the Queen in an unenviable position.
She adores her grandson but she is also hugely reliant on the divorced daughter of a Liverpool docks crane driver. And she certainly does not approve of family members raising their voices at the people who work for them, often for long hours and low wages, whatever the provocation.
While Buckingham Palace has quite rightly remained loftily above the fray, the contretemps does shine a spotlight on the remarkable relationship between our monarch and her closest female domestic aide.
It is one which has moved from that of mistress and servant to that of one where they exchange confidences.
Over the years, Angela has revolutionised the Queen’s wardrobe with vibrant colours and more modern designs.
Along the way it has led to an unbreakable companionship between two very different women, one brought up in a palace and the other one of six children raised in a two-up, two-down in the back streets of Liverpool.
It has reached a level of trust where Angela has been permitted to write two books about the Queen – with a third understood to be on the way – that makes her position inside the hierarchical world of Buckingham Palace almost impregnable.
ALL of which makes stories of the row between Harry and Miss Kelly all the more baffling. This week Angela is, as usual, at the Queen’s side at Balmoral, having spent most of lockdown with her at Windsor Castle.
These days she is not just the Queen’s senior dresser but also her dressmaker and curator.
During lockdown she not only attended to the Queen’s clothes for all those Zoom conferences and TV appearances – but also to her hair. With her regular hairdresser unable to visit, Angela would supervise the Queen’s wash and blow-dry.
It is 26 years since Angela arrived at the Palace after being invited to apply for a junior post as an assistant dresser.
A former driver with the Women’s Royal Army Corps, she first met
the Queen – and apparently hit it off with her – while employed as housekeeper to the British ambassador in Berlin when the embassy hosted a royal visit.
Such was her determination to get the palace job that Angela sold her washing machine in order to buy what she thought would be an appropriate outfit for the interview – ‘a crisp clean blouse with navy spots and a long skirt’.
It was that attention to detail which would later endear her to the Queen.
Yet back then, nobody could have imagined that within remarkably few years she would rise to become a figure of major influence in palace life.
As she boldly put it in her book, The Other Side Of The Coin: ‘I now know that my tendency to be forthright was a breath of fresh air for many of my colleagues, but it took me quite some time to learn the right approach when it came to expressing myself.’
In the same section, she acknowledges her AK-47 nickname ‘as a compliment’. Of the jealousies among other staff that have arisen with her rise, she has quipped: ‘I don’t have any more room for knives in my back.’
Might this abruptness been apparent to Prince Harry the day he asked Angela about tiaras for his bride to be ahead of their 2018 wedding? But while both have hair-trigger tempers, even Angela’s detractors – and there are any number of them among Palace staff – do not believe she would have been deliberately obstructive to the Queen’s grandson.
For in fact Angela was following the Queen’s orders. She had instructed Angela to provide a selection of tiaras which had been whittled down to three.
According to an intimate source, Harry and Meghan asked about another tiara which was not on the shortlist. ‘They probably Googled it and thought it was one they would like,’ says the source.
But its provenance was uncertain and the couple were encouraged to choose one of three the Queen and Miss Kelly had selected.
According to Scobie’s version of events, Meghan didn’t get to try the tiara on with her hairdresser until a few days before the wedding. ‘Harry felt that there were those within the institution that would stop at nothing to make Meghan’s life difficult,’ he said.
What happened next is subject of keen debate.
Some say Harry shouted at Angela, perhaps emboldened by his knowledge that she is not one of Prince Charles’s favourite members of staff, someone whom he believes has been indulged. One insider says this was reported back to the Queen, who asked Harry to come and see her – rather than him calling his grandmother, as Scobie has asserted.
Was this when he referred to Miss Kelly as ‘this woman’?
Whatever the truth, the Queen will want to draw a line under this matter as fast as possible and Harry will likely be aware that dragging his grandmother into this trifling row was an error.
As for Angela Kelly, there will be the satisfaction that the Queen always backs her, even if she sometimes rolls her eyes while doing so.
But imagine the kind of book she could one day write.