Several
short scenes in Dancing
King are set
in what’s called the Buckingham Palace Library. Michael Kent-Hughes meets here
with Josh Gittings , the man who becomes his chief of staff, the Monday after
the family’s arrival in London. He tells Gittings that the volumes in the room
are dusty, and he wished he had an inventory of what was in the room. Michael
conducts interviews here, most notably the one with Geoffrey Venneman, one of
the chief villains of the novel. Michael is using the library as a quasi-office
until his own office is remodeled.
I should
mention here that there is no official “royal library” in Buckingham Palace. I
invented the room for the novel.
At the
rear of the ground level of the palace, there is the Bow Room, a large room
that arcs on the terrace side. On the official tour, you walk through this room
to exit to turn in your tour head sets and find the refreshment tent. The Bow
Room is officially a kind of waiting room for guests, until they’re conducted
to meet with the monarch. There are rooms on either side of the Bow Room, which
were originally designed to be the library. From early on, though, Victoria and
Albert, the first to occupy the palace, used the two rooms and the Bow Room for
other purposes.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Illustration: The Octagonal Library at Buckingham House. Buckingham House was incorporated into Buckingham Palace but the library building was not.
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