On 12 October 2018, Princess Eugenie married Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle, in a ceremony funded in part by the Sovereign Grant, the British government’s annual payment to the monarchy. At my local gym that day, I overheard two people discussing the day’s events.
“I hate it when people moan about how much money royal weddings cost,” one said. “This country has more important problems to worry about. I thought she looked beautiful.”
This is neither the first nor the last time I have heard such sentiment. In the six years I’ve been writing my new book, ‘Running the Family Firm: How the monarchy manages its image and our money’, I have been asked many times why I spend so long thinking about monarchy when we are faced with seemingly more important global inequalities.
