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Huge media clamour is the only cloud over monarchy's hopes of a new dawn, writes Caroline Davies
The Queen was at Newmarket – a day centre, not the races; Camilla planted a tree; and, somewhere in Somerset, the tireless but little-lauded Duke of Gloucester unveiled a plaque.
Bread and butter royal engagements, but performed with added verve and broader smiles to larger than usual crowds, and buoyed by the undoubted PR success of "that wedding".
As the newlyweds settle into married life on Anglesey – he back to the day job and taking part in two mountain rescues last week, she dodging unwelcome paparazzi cameras while out shopping at the local supermarket – behind the scenes, "Team William" will surely be congratulating themselves on a flawless operation, perfectly executed with the help of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House.
"Nothing leaked – the dress, the stag and hen nights, the fact they were postponing their honeymoon. We knew nothing until they wanted us to know," remarked royal biographer Hugo Vickers. "They drip, drip information in the build up – it keeps people happy, but they control it. They pulled it off."
William and Kate were always going to do things a little differently. Driving Prince Charles's plonk-powered eco-Aston Martin, festooned with ribbons and bearing L-plates and a JU5T WED registration, down the Mall was their idea. The chocolate digestive wedding cake, bacon butties laid on for hardened wedding partiers, and Kate's £49.99 high street going-away outfit served to dilute stuffy protocol with just enough "common touches" for some to dream of a new monarchical dawn.
The US was "mesmerised", the father of the groom was told during some presidential facetime with Barack Obama in Washington this week. Even the flirty antipodeans, forever threatening to bolt, seemed wooed away from the lure of republicanism, with polls showing support for the monarchy at its highest for years.
William, who calls people "mate" and whose brother, Harry, refers to him as "the Dude", has very clear ideas of how he wants to do things – refusing to let his life be ruled by aides from the "old guard" whose ideas "are old-fashioned and don't work nowadays", as he told the presenter (and wedding guest) Ben Fogle in a TV interview last year.
His trusted team at St James's Palace is led by the private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, 50, a Sandhurst-educated ex-SAS officer and former equerry to the Queen Mother – a "charismatic James Bond figure who I'm sure could charm the pants off you whilst strangling you to death", according to one royal correspondent. Miguel Head, an ex-Ministry of Defence press officer described as "bloody good" by many journalists, leads William's press team under the eye of Charles's communications secretary, the former Manchester United PR Paddy Harverson. "You get the impression William, Jamie and Miguel are very close," added the correspondent.
The couple's friends also "played a blinder", according to observers. (William is said to have weeded out the treacherous by confiding differing tit-bits of information over the years to see which, if any, ended up in newspapers.) And the Middletons, aside from some ill-judged royal promotions on the Party Pieces website that has earned them many millions, are deemed not to have put a foot wrong – so far.
While Kate's mother, Carole, "judged it just right with one shy wave to the world as she got out of the car", according to Vickers, the maid of honour, Kate's sister, Pippa, poured into a cream silk Sarah Burton number and almost imploded Twitter – earning her derriere its own Facebook page and her the title Her Royal Hotness. But the 27-year-old, too, has since kept a low profile.
For how long, though, is uncertain. "There is huge interest, we've had calls from all our agents in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, the US and Australia, and Pippa's the one," said Max Cisotti from Xclusive pictures, who says the company's photographers "never harass" and "will always adhere to the PCC rules" – though he can't speak for "a few idiots out there in London with a camera who call themselves photographers".
The royal historian Robert Lacey, author of the best-selling Majesty, pointed to the contrast between the image of Kate's father after the wedding – "next day, there's Mr Middleton out on his lawnmower, even though it was a pretty posh lawnmower" – and the behaviour of Lady Diana's relatives three decades ago.
"From the snippets we've heard from Mr Middleton's wedding speech – that he knew the relationship was serious when he found a helicopter on his lawn – well, it's such a contrast to the Spencers," Lacey said.
"Within hours of Diana's engagement being announced, there was old Lord Spencer embarrassing everybody by snapping away taking pictures of people cheering his daughter. And her brother was signing up to become a TV royal commentator."
Many lessons have been learned since Charles and Diana's days. Who could imagine the Prince of Wales out playing football with friends in Battersea Park on the eve of his wedding? Or sending his press secretary, and protection officers, into a spin by suddenly announcing he is going to glad-hand the crowd outside Clarence House?
Media opportunities, and the access given to the princes, are part of the success of a PR strategy that has been built over many years. Colleen Harris, former press secretary to Charles when William left Eton for a gap year and then St Andrews University, helped sow the seeds of last week's PR success.
"Post his parents divorce and his mother's death, the relationship with the media was quite difficult, and I suspect that both William and Harry did blame the media to some extent," she said.
When William started at St Andrews, the deal was that the media had full access on the day, provided they promised to leave town immediately afterwards. Which they all did, except for the Ardent TV crew employed, rather embarrassingly, by Prince Edward, who had his knuckles severely rapped.
"Gradually, as they have got older, the princes accept they do need the media and the media can shine a spotlight on some of the good work the monarchy does," said Harris, who admits building that relationship was "tricky" at times.
"But I do also think it is part of their upbringing. Diana taught them about understanding the common man. And that is how they have turned out. They do have a relationship with ordinary people. He's married one."
Whether the media will abide by pledges to leave the couple alone is doubtful, judging from the pictures snatched of Kate in Anglesey's Waitrose last week. It will be tested when the couple finally go on honeymoon.
Announcing the surprise delay on the wedding day was another "clever media strategy" for a prince who likes to outfox the cameras.
But when the couple do get to wherever, it is hard to imagine William sinking himself, "hermit-like", into a stack of books by the Afrikaner author and philosopher Laurens van der Post, and "an old boy called Jung" – as Diana gloomily recalled his father doing on their honeymoon aboard the royal yacht Britannia.
"Pure joy," Charles wrote to friends from the yacht's verandah.
"Second night, out came the Van der Post novels [sic] he hadn't read," said Diana years later. "We read them and had to analyse them over lunch every day."
Designer lets it slip
Clearly she was supposed to keep shtoom, but with the entire world clamouring to know any scrap of juicy gossip, royal wedding dress designer Sarah Burton has started to give away a few choice details about working with the new Duchess of Cambridge.
Guests at an event at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York last Tuesday were told not to ask questions about "that dress", but the Alexander McQueen creative director found it hard to ignore questions from intrigued shoppers. "She said the princess was one of the most lovely women she had ever met and was really low maintenance," said a customer, Norah Lawlor.
Burton also reportedly revealed that the design of the dress was a 50/50 collaboration with Kate Middleton, adding that "it was made for her and has a lot of her personality in it", strengthening the theory that Middleton plundered pictures of Grace Kelly's wedding gown to present to Burton.
Media sources in New York relished another Burton statement: that both Middleton sisters, Kate and Philippa, are "really nice and down to earth" – something US-based blogs claimed was obvious because the bride opted for a tiny tiara and earrings given to her by her parents rather than turning to the crown jewels.
Celebrity magazine Us Weekly also reported that the lacemakers were duped into believing their work was for a dress for a British period costume drama, while Burton's seamstresses were also apparently told they were doing a dress for a film.
Despite months of secrecy and a confidentiality agreement with the palace, it was Burton's appearance at the Goring Hotel on the eve of the wedding, wearing an Alexander McQueen-designed fur trapper hat, that finally revealed her identity as the dress's designer. She admitted: "The most fun I had was trying to hide … we laughed a lot about that."