Page 435 - The Secret Museum

suggested that the men stay for no more than two years so that none of them became

intimate with the household servants, but the king wasn’t sure about that idea, and
asked the Privy Purse Office to write to the Post Office suggesting that two men be
employed on an ongoing basis, with their jobs reviewed each year. At some point,
the switchboard was modified, so operators must have been listening in. I’m not
surprised.

Everywhere inside the palace that had a telephone connection is listed. You could
be put through to the two entrances – the swanky Ambassador’s Entrance or the more
informal Privy Purse Door, the door in the north-west corner of the palace behind

which the palace staff work.

You could have got through to to Sq/Ldr Checketts, that is, Squadron Leader Sir
David John Checketts, who was Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales from 1970
to 1978, and Equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh before that. Or, if you’d fancied a chat
with or about any of the household staff pageboys, footmen, equerries – they are all
on the switchboard, all on speed dial. In the evenings, the hotline number was the
‘Pages Night ext.’ In the run-up to an event, no doubt the bells of the Linen Room and
the Silver Pantry sang throughout the palace. I’m hoping the Lift Engineers didn’t

have to be called too often. No one likes being stuck in a lift.

I can’t be sure who Mr Greenwood, Miss Fowler, Mrs de Klee and Miss
Colquhoun were, but they’re on the list, and were probably friends of the Royal
Family. ‘L. Rupert Nevill’ – Lord and Lady Rupert Nevill – certainly were: they
threw a garden party in the autumn of 1959 at which Princess Margaret met the
photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, now Lord Snowdon, who was to become her
husband.

Members of the Royal Family, including Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of
Edinburgh, had their own line, of course, as did the prime minister, and Buckingham

Palace had a direct link to other royal residences, such as Balmoral Castle and
Sandringham.

The first telephone exchange opened in London in 1879, to be followed a year
later by the first telephone directory – an early Yellow Pages. It is only four pages
long and contains 248 names, those of the first people to take the plunge into a newly
linked-up world. There are some illustrious names in the mix, including Alexander
Bell & Co. When Alexander Graham Bell invented his prototype telephone, he
suggested that people answer with ‘Ahoy, hoy.’

Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, had the number Victoria 1436 in 1910. Harry
Houdini, who listed himself as Harry Houdini, Handcuff King, was at Gerrard 1312

in 1916. Buckingham Palace had four phone lines by then, at Victoria 1436. The
royal residence upped the number of its lines quickly, discovering, as we all did,
how handy it is to give someone a call rather than wait for a letter to arrive by post.

If you wanted to call Winston Churchill in 1925, what would you do? Look him up