A Heartfelt Thank You to the Royals Extra Community
I will be taking some time off, but I'm giving you something extra as well
It has been nearly eighteen months since I launched Royals Extra, and this week my readership is approaching 10,000 subscribers. I am overjoyed to reach that number, and I feel endlessly grateful to all of you who have signed up to receive my weekly features providing exclusive information and insights as well as rare images. My dedication to give you something “Extra” about the British royal family continues unabated as I keep diving into my extensive research covering more than a century.
I have now published over 100 Royals Extra posts, each of which has told a unique story. What sets Royals Extra apart is its emphasis on stories that take readers away from the whirling news cycle. My aim from the beginning has been to give you a fresh perspective on members of today’s royal family, often by connecting them to individuals and situations in the past. I see the royal family as a continuum in which the past really is prologue. Royals Extra has evolved as a collection of these stories, many of them timeless.
I also want to let you know that over the next month, my husband and I will be with our far-flung family—our three children and five grandchildren from England, California, and Connecticut. This is the only time of year when all of us gather together for a nice stretch, and I hope you understand that I want to make the most of it.
Royals Extra will be very much with me, however. Even when I am not writing, I am thinking of story ideas and future posts. Thinking is essential to my writing, and the opportunity to step away and take stock helps me to rejuvenate.
I hope that those of you who are free subscribers will consider taking the next step and signing on as paid subscribers for $6 a month—around the cost of a cup of coffee— or $60 a year. I intentionally priced Royals Extra below the rate charged by most of the popular Substacks, in hopes of reaching the largest possible audience. Paid subscribers can read my posts in their entirety and have access to all my stories in the Royals Extra archive. If you feel like underwriting “something extra,” you can join as a “Founding Member” for $150 annually.
Royals Extra draws on my research archives from writing four books about the royal family and dozens of stories for newspapers, mostly in Britain, where editors demand a deep understanding of the monarchy. As Royals Extra evolved, it became virtually a full-time job as I realized that I could have an instant connection with readers, along with flexibility and an informal tone that are different from a long-term book project.
There is no paywall on this post, and for summer reading I’m providing links to ten of the most popular Royals Extra posts. They contain paywalls that I couldn’t remove, but each one allows the reader a seven-day free trial, including access to the Royals Extra archive. Those of you who have been with Royals Extra from the beginning will recognize them and might enjoy taking a second look. For more recent free and paid subscribers, I hope these selections will show the range of my work on Royals Extra since March 2023.
Enjoy the rest of the summer. I’ll look forward to reconnecting with all of you in September.
With gratitude, as ever,
Sally Bedell Smith
1/ (9) The Castle of Mey in Scotland, Beloved by the Queen Mum and King Charles III (substack.com)
August 12, 2023
I begin with this post from a year ago because King Charles III is now on his annual visit to Mey. As in the past, he attended the Mey Highland Games today, and tomorrow, the 4th of August, he will carry out his tradition of marking his grandmother’s birthday in 1900. The castle has become more of a tourist attraction than it was when I had the rare privilege of spending a night during the Summer Solstice in 2009 that I describe in this post. Mey is currently offering private tours for up to a dozen guests, including a three-course dinner in the castle dining room where Charles eats during his stays. There are no overnight accommodations for guests, but I have several friends who have raved about staying in the nearby Granary Lodge, a luxury Bed-and-Breakfast restored by the King.
2/ (9) A Kansas City Philanthropist in King Charles's Court (substack.com)
May 5, 2024
This is a profile and interview with Julia Irene Kauffman, a prominent philanthropist from Kansas City, Missouri, who loves the Castle of Mey nearly as much as the King, and whose generous donation made possible the Mey visitor center as well as other initiatives close to Charles’s heart.
3/ (9) Behind the Bold New Portrait of King Charles III (substack.com)
May 18, 2024
In this assessment of the much-praised King’s portrait, I revealed a little-known painting by the artist that inspired its composition and the connection to Charles’s father through the butterfly hovering above his shoulder.
4/ (10) A Getaway by the Sea - ROYALS EXTRA BY SALLY BEDELL SMITH (substack.com)
June 14, 2024
This is a sweet story about a private holiday taken by the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in the summer of 1932 at Rest Harrow, the seaside “cottage” owned by American-born Lady Astor in Sandwich Bay, Kent. They escaped from the formalities of a Windsor Castle house party and the Ascot races to spend a restful six days with their daughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. I know Rest Harrow well, having stayed there with the current owners, who allowed me to take some photographs that I included in my story. I also quoted from the private correspondence of Nancy Astor shared with me by her granddaughter Emily.
5/ (9) The Colorful History of Royal Lodge (substack.com)
May 21, 2023
Drawing on royal family letters I read in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle as well as Glamis Castle in Scotland for my biography, George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy, I revealed the origins of Royal Lodge in the Windsor Great Park as a royal residence since 1931 when King George V gave it to his son Bertie, the future George VI.
6/ (9) Charles and Camilla's Scottish Love Nest (substack.com)
January 13, 2024
After King Charles III leaves the Castle of Mey this Wednesday, he will join Queen Camilla at Birkhall, their “marital” home on the monarch’s Balmoral estate in Scotland. In this portrait of the house and its inhabitants, I described how Birkhall has evolved since the 1930s as the home of both the Queen Mum and her favorite grandson. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip as well as Charles and Camilla spent idyllic honeymoons here, and the King and Queen have used Birkhall as a private retreat in the winter as well as the late summer, when they typically stay for more than a month.
December 8, 2023
I had a personal connection to this mystery, which has yet to be solved. My son David’s beloved mutt Otto (who sadly died last February at age eleven), was the brother of Bogart, the dog Meghan Markle rescued from the Saving Spot shelter in Los Angeles where the two puppies were brought from a kill shelter. This rather poignant story included a “play date” in Malibu organized by Meghan in February 2013 through emails with my son that I shared with readers, as well as an exclusive photograph of Meghan cradling Bogart and Otto on the beach.
8/ (9) How George VI and Elizabeth established a lasting rapport with ordinary people (substack.com)
September 16, 2023
In this feature I described the first public engagement carried out by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth after he took the crown on the abdication of his older brother, King Edward VIII. This visit in February 1937 to the “People’s Palace” in one of London’s poorest neighborhoods had gone unnoticed by historians and biographers. Through contemporary accounts and rare photographs, I showed how long before Diana, Princess of Wales claimed the title, George VI was a true “People’s King.”
9/ (9) King George VI's Last Day (substack.com)
February 5, 2024
On the eve of the anniversary of King George VI’s death on February 6, 1952, I recounted how he and Queen Elizabeth spent their last days together. Based on letters and other contemporary accounts and photographs, I reconstructed the King’s final hours, described by Winston Churchill as a “happy day of sunshine and sport” with neighbors, tenants, farmers, policemen, and members of his staff—a reflection of how much a man of the people he was.
March 10, 2024
I was glad that this feature on the 60th birthday of Prince Edward ranked among the most popular Royals Extras. In addition to writing about his important role in the royal family and his marriage to Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, I enjoyed taking readers back to the spring of 1991, when the 27-year-old prince came to Manhattan to watch the world championship of court tennis, a challenging and ancient game that the duke continues to play avidly. It was also an opportunity to feature an account written by my husband, Stephen G. Smith, of a “friendly” match he played with Edward, and a photograph of them afterwards taken by my son, Kirk Bedell. Stephen—an experienced and highly respected editor of magazines and newspapers for more than forty years—has been my mainstay on Royals Extra, offering invaluable suggestions and meticulous line edits on everything I write.
I hope you have a glorious time with your family!
I am enjoying your writing tremendously and will miss them while you take some well-deserved time with your family. I hope you all have a great vacation.