Page 436 - The Secret Museum

in the phone book and call Paddington 1003. He might not have answered, but

someone in his household, possibly his butler, would have. Sigmund Freud is in the
book, too, as are Marie Stopes, Virginia Woolf and Ian Fleming – you could interrupt
him writing tales of James Bond by calling Tate 2300.

In 1931, King George V was given the 2 millionth telephone in Britain. The
telephone, a model 232CB, was installed in Buckingham Palace in June. There is a
replica of it in storage at the Museum of London, among the millions of hidden
treasures, each one telling a fragment of the story of London.

In 1953, the Queen allowed television cameras into Westminster Abbey for her
coronation, and an extra half-million television sets were sold to people who wanted

to watch it. There are some of these sets in storage in Hackney. There is an unusual
one, a Pye television, with a curved screen filled with paraffin. It was sold with an
image of the Queen inserted behind the screen, which is still there.

The Queen has always kept up with the times. Today she has a mobile phone, an
iPod and is set up with an email account she uses to keep in touch with her
grandchildren. She dictates her messages, uses Google, has approved a royal channel
on YouTube and allowed an internet café to be set up in Buckingham Palace.