Secrets of the Royal Palaces

-Britain's royal palaces are family homes like no other.

Historic... -These buildings speak to our extraordinary royal past.

-...secure... -Palaces are fortresses.

They're super safe.

You're protected.

-...and deeply secretive.

-It is the poshest, most regal gated community in the world.

-In this new series, we sneak inside more of Britain's extraordinary royal homes... to eavesdrop on palace secrets... -Suddenly now, to hear it in full verse from the Princess of Wales was quite extraordinary.

-...uncover mysterious treasures... -They were shrouded in secrecy, both outside the walls of the palace and even inside.

-...reveal hidden royal residences the public know nothing about... -It is absolutely not for public access, and therefore we only get a glimpse of it.

-...and unearth the stories of the most dramatic palace moments.

-He said, "If you see this, I will be dead.

I'm going to kill the Queen."

-These are the extraordinary and brand new secrets of the royal palaces.

This time, we reveal secret stories of love and marriage at the palace as two royal newlyweds go house hunting.

-Meghan actually wanted Windsor Castle.

That was actually her request to the Queen.

-And we explore the forgotten royal home where the late Queen was happiest.

-For a very brief moment, she was where she wanted to be with a conventional fellow in a conventional family.

-We discover the hidden love nest Charles and Camilla created after they married.

-It's a complete antithesis of what you would think that a king in waiting would be looking for.

-And at Buckingham Palace, we expose Victoria's erotic gift from husband Albert.

-It was X-rated.

It was too undressed for public display.

-But first to Sandringham, the traditional setting for a royal palace Christmas.

And in 1989, the royals seemed keen on sticking to one Christmas tradition above all -- marital strife.

-1989 Charles and Diana's relationship is in tatters -- behind the scenes -- because in public, although there have been rumors and there have been have been suggestions in the newspaper that they were not really getting on, the couple were still married, still very much together.

-Even though cracks were beginning to show, the couple were expected to keep up appearances.

Especially when it came to the traditional Sandringham Christmas.

-We know now that Diana found that very, very difficult, that these Christmases at Sandringham, even though she was with her boys, but that they were really torture for her.

-Diana was like a caged bird trapped in Sandringham.

When we get to New Year's Eve, 1989, there she is, actually, all alone in her room.

Except she wasn't.

She had a telephone.

And on New Year's Eve, 1989, she took a telephone call from one James Gilbey from his mobile phone to her landline in her room in Sandringham.

-James Gilbey is an old friend and he's, I suppose, a shoulder to cry on, somebody to talk to and, you know, a handsome young fellow.

-The Princess and James had recently become close, as their phone call made very clear.

-This was so shocking.

The wife of the heir to the throne being intimate over the telephone in a royal palace with someone who wasn't her husband.

The reason it was called Squidgy Kate, [Chuckles] was because James kept referring to Diana as Squidgy.

Obviously a pet nickname.

It wasn't just nicknames in this call.

There was a lot of sexual innuendo.

-What the precise nature of that relationship is cannot be said because neither of them have ever spoken about it.

-He acts almost like the husband that she wanted Charles to be.

He acts as her confidant.

Her friends say,"Don't worry, sweetie, you're doing -- you know, you're doing a really good job.

Keep going."

-But the Sandringham call didn't just reveal the closeness of her relationship with Gilbey.

It gave us a window into her role within the royal family.

-We learn little -- little glimmers of what Diana's life is like, that she's not all that happy, that she feels she's done so much for this family.

-It was those kind of little insights, vignettes into the royal family that were quite damaging.

Diana's fear and paranoia that the Queen mother, Queen Elizabeth, had been giving her dirty looks over supper, or the staff member coming in and asking her what she wanted for her New Year's Eve supper, and it was just a salad as she'd had the night before.

-It's sad because it reveals the princess's deep loneliness, her unhappiness.

This apparently perfect marriage was imperfect in every possible way.

-These astonishing revelations reached the public via the unlikely figure of Cyril Reenan, a retired bank manager and amateur radio enthusiast who spent his days scanning the airwaves.

Cyril had picked up and recorded Diana's phone call before selling it to The Sun newspaper.

-As a former Sun royal correspondent myself, you would literally think all your Christmases and New Year's had come at once.

It would have been a scoop of the decade.

Amazing story.

-But was there something suspicious about the recording of this phone call?

Diana's personal protection officer, Ken Wharfe, smelt a rat.

-When you look at the technology at that time in the '80s, you know, Diana using a hand phone in Sandringham, Gilbey using a mobile phone in southwest London, the technology at that time would appear to have been difficult for Reenan to have picked that up.

-The secret recording of a phone call from within the palace walls begged many troubling questions.

-How was that recorded, why was it recorded, and why was it released?

-Later, we'll explore who really recorded the Squidgygate tapes.

Diana wasn't the first young princess to hide away in a palace.

40 years earlier, a young Princess Elizabeth was also hiding.

but in a very different palace and in much happier circumstances.

-For most of us living today, the Queen is remembered predominantly as an old woman.

But of course, like everyone else, she had her youth.

And it wasn't all spent being queen.

-Five years before ascending the throne, Elizabeth was a young princess married to a dashing war hero, then, at the peak of his nautical career.

-So Philip is a prince, but his primary duty is that he's a naval officer.

-Prince Philip spent a lot of time between 1949 and 1951, in Malta, where he was stationed, which was then a British colony, and if Elizabeth wanted to be with him, she was going to have to be, in effect, a naval wife.

And in order to be a naval wife, she'd have to live in Malta.

-Philip would have been happy to bunk on board one of his beloved ships, but the future monarch required accommodation with a little more decorum.

Luckily, Philip's uncle, Dickie, Lord Mountbatten to the rest of us, had the perfect spot on the edge of the Maltese capital, Valletta.

-The late Queen described the Villa Guardamangia as a townhouse, a typical understatement, 'cause everything's relative.

-Built by a Catholic priest in the 18th century, the villa has since fallen into disrepair, belying its true palatial stature.

-This was no little residence for a parish priest.

He built something on a grand scale for himself -- 18 rooms, stables, a courtyard, very pleasant gardens and wall walks, entrances on a couple of levels.

So one person's townhouse is another person's summer palace.

-But a house isn't a home until you make it one.

So Elizabeth had the essentials shipped out from Britain -- furniture, artwork, and, of course, staff.

-Three cooks, six stewards, a coxwain, two marine drivers, a valet, a butler, a housekeeper, two housemaids, a charwoman -- 19 in all.

-Once fully kitted out, Villa Guardamangia became a home away from home for the princess.

Whenever possible, she'd head to Malta to spend time with the man she loved.

-For a very brief moment, she was where she wanted to be with her conventional fellow in a conventional family.

And yeah, he is the guy with the job and she is the wifey back at home.

-Privacy, freedom, and a chance to be almost normal.

Villa Guardamangia allowed Elizabeth to escape the mounting pressures of being a royal and live a secret life.

-She'd go shopping, she pottered around, apparently in a Morris minor seen going around town.

-She could go swimming in creeks.

She could enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

She wouldn't always get spotted.

-One thing that Elizabeth really took to was the nightlife of Malta.

And so she and her sister, Margaret, would be seen going round the capital, Valletta, to the various nightspots where Elizabeth would dazzle everybody with her ability to samba.

-So it was very much wedded bliss and happiness.

This interlude is incredibly powerful in her memory for the rest of her life.

She spoke about Malta as her Isle of happiness.

This period was an idyll.

-Sadly, it was inevitable that royal life would eventually intrude on Elizabeth's secret paradise.

-From 1951, I think things began to be ominous, although the public didn't know.

I think the king's state of health was very, very poor.

-George VI, by late '51, was unable to fulfill his duties.

So what you have is Philip leaving his naval career early, before the King dies, in anticipation of what's coming and to pick up the slack.

-The rest is royal history.

The Queen was crowned in 1952, and the relatively normal life she and Philip had fleetingly enjoyed in their secret Maltese palace was over.

Coming up, a new theory emerges as to who really recorded Diana's secret Sandringham phone call.

-This could have been released on a loop from the government's central listening station.

-We discover the statue of Prince Albert that was too erotic for Buckingham Palace.

-Victoria kept her secret private version of the statue to look on in Osborne House whenever she chose.

-And Meghan has her eyes on someone else's particularly big house.

-Meghan actually wanted Windsor Castle.

That was actually her request to the Queen.

=Royal palaces are the traditional symbol of royalty, but they are also homes.

And when family circumstances change, the royals must go palace hunting.

In 2018, Harry and Meghan were living in the cozy two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.

But then came some happy news.

-It was announced that Meghan was pregnant in September 2018.

And so by the time their first child was born, they wanted somewhere bigger.

Megan actually wanted Windsor Castle.

That was actually her request to the Queen.

She wanted a suite of rooms at Windsor Castle that was quite quickly turned down.

-Instead, the Queen looked at her vast property portfolio and came up with an alternative.

Half a mile south of the castle on the Windsor estate and largely hidden from public view, lies Frogmore Cottage, built in 1801 for George III's wife, Queen Charlotte.

-Frogmore cottage, despite the name, really isn't a cottage.

It's a very large, substantial old house.

-Although technically a wedding present from Harry's granny, the property came with strings attached.

-If you are a working royal undertaking public engagements, Royal tours on behalf of the Crown, the monarch, in this case Queen Elizabeth, usually always gives the member of the family a grace and favor home.

-She wasn't giving them the house bricks and mortar, lock, stock, and barrel.

She was giving them permission to live in the house, and as such, they were tenants, and the Queen was their landlady.

-The grade two listed cottage had become rather rundown over the years, so Harry and Meghan gave it a major makeover.

-2.5 million of taxpayers money was spent turning this formerly ten bedroom with five apartments accommodation into a luxury five bedroom, all singing, all dancing family home.

-They were also offered the run of the Royal Art collection.

I mean this art collection, one of the best in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci's Canalettos.

Sculptures, paintings, sketches, textiles, you name it, it's there.

And they could just go in like kids in a sweetie shop and pick whatever they wanted to hang on the walls of Frogmore Cottage.

A source of mine who went there said that whenever they went, the house was full of flowers.

There were diptyque candles burning.

Meghan had very sophisticated and elegant tastes and she made the interior look very beautiful.

-The Sussexes moved into the gloriously refurbished residence in August 2019, but within six months of moving in, a serious case of rot had set in.

-We now know that relationships between Harry and Meghan and the rest of the royal family had become very frosty, very sour.

-And then, of course, the bombshell.

In January 2020, they said that they didn't want to be part of the working royal family anymore.

They wanted to step back.

They wanted to earn their own money.

-They had plans of splitting their time between the USA and the UK.

But stepping back from royal duties had one very major drawback -- no grace and favor newly refurbished home.

-Harry wanted to keep Frogmore Cottage because he is British and he wanted to have a secure base because don't forget, Frogmore Cottage is protected by that ring of steel that the perimeter of Windsor Home Park gives.

It's protected.

Not just anyone can go in -- security passes, etc.

it's protected by the police.

-To keep his ultra secure Windsor home, Harry struck a secret deal with the palace.

-He negotiated that they pay commercial rent in the region, I think I revealed, �18--, �19,000 a month for them to keep Frogmore Cottage.

-Nobody was meant to find out about it, but they did.

Eventually, the press and, of course, the public got wind of this.

-As the couple were no longer officially on the royal books, the taxpayers demanded their money back for the expensive refurbishment.

-After a sustained period of criticism, Harry eventually caved in, and that money was paid back, a sizable sum of money, around �2.5 million.

On the understanding, on the proviso that they could continue to use Frogmore Cottage.

-But in 2022 the couple got a new landlord and he had other ideas about his troublesome tenants, as we'll discover later.

180 years ago in Buckingham Palace, there was another young newlywed couple grabbing all the headlines.

A couple whose passion threatened to scandalize society.

-There's often this perception of Queen Victoria as a prudish widow.

We are not amused.

Well, that wasn't the case behind closed doors with Albert.

They had a very passionate relationship, and they loved exchanging rather erotic, exciting gifts, particularly of each other.

Victoria's birthday in 1841, Albert commissioned a statue of himself as a classical warrior in a tunic.

And the statue had a very short skirt, so Albert's legs were on display.

His arms were on display.

Now Victoria really did like Albert's legs.

She'd said in the past, she'd written in her diary, that Albert had come in from the rain, and he was wearing cashmere breeches with nothing underneath, and that she liked.

When the statue was delivered, Victoria was delighted, calling it very beautiful.

But Albert quickly got worried that it was just too much.

It was X-rated.

It was too undressed for public display with those naked legs and feet.

Because you have to remember that in the Victorian times, feet and ankles were a shockingly hidden, erotic part of the body.

So the thought that Albert's naked ankles and feet could be on show to any person who passed through Buckingham Palace, that was shocking.

Albert commissioned a more appropriate PG version of the statue, with a longer tunic and sandals on those naked feet that was displayed in Buckingham Palace for all to see.

But Victoria kept her secret private version of the statue with naked feet to look on in Osborne House whenever she chose.

-Victoria was able to keep her secret life and statue private.

Unlike Princess Diana, who on New Year's Eve, 1989, had her privacy shattered when a private phone call of hers was recorded and sold to The Sun.

But astonishingly, The Sun kept it a secret.

-You have to remember that nothing really had been ever been said in public before about either Charles or Diana having affairs or anything like that.

And there was a real fear of upsetting the royal family.

I think with any major, major scoop, any tabloid newspaper is worried about being first.

Yes, they want to be first.

But being first also carries huge risk.

-When The Sun didn't publish the story, other newspapers in Fleet Street were sent the anonymous tape recordings in the post.

-I received my copy in 1991.

Plain brown envelope.

No forwarding address, no letter, just a tape.

Because of the uncertainty about it, because nobody wanted to be responsible for breaking up what was known as the fairy tale marriage, I think media companies hands -- hands were stayed, and no one did it.

So the tape was knocking around for a year, two years, maybe, before it actually came out.

-In August 1992, The Sun finally published the story splashed across its front page.

-The timing couldn't have been worse for Diana, because she was on holiday with the rest of the royal family at Balmoral.

-And in those days, um, the Queen liked to see all the newspapers laid out on breakfast sideboard so that the family could look at the front pages while helping themselves to their scrambled eggs or kedgeree.

-Diana left Balmoral and drove through the night to get back to London.

Her royal protection officer was at her side.

-I remember being back at Kensington Palace soon thereafter in the sort of the fallout from that.

Because of her sense of duty to Her Majesty the Queen, I think she was always concerned about what she might think.

She certainly wasn't concerned about what her husband might think.

-But the tabloids were just getting started.

- The Sun didn't only publish the transcript.

In true Sun style, they set up a premium phone line which cost 36 pence a minute, huge amount now, let alone in 1992.

You could ring up and listen to the tape playing over and over again on a loop.

-Knowing Diana as I did, I'm sure she was probably one of the first to phone in and listen to it.

Why not?

Why would you not do it?

Um, you know, because it was evidence.

I mean, all the things that Diana was -- was looking for was evidence to say, "Look, I'm not wrong here."

So, yeah, of course she would have listened to it and would have laughed about it and thought, "Well, you know, that's what I'm telling you."

-Soon after the first leak, a new development was to turn the story on its head.

-A month after the original publication of the Squidgygate story, in August '92, The Sun got another ring in.

And this ring in was from a woman who lived not very far away from Cyril, who'd also recorded the same Squidgygate tape.

But what was strange was that she'd recorded it days after Cyril.

How could that possibly have been?

How did two amateur radio enthusiasts record the same telephone conversation several days apart?

-People began to question, um, the veracity of this account.

That was this seriously the work of amateurs?

Or was there something slightly more sinister going on in the background?

-Convinced she was under constant surveillance, the princess took security measures into her own hands at Kensington Palace.

-Diana did think she was being bugged.

Sarah Ferguson said to Diana that she knew an amateur firm of debuggers, and these people arrived, suggesting to the police at Kensington Palace that these -- they were coming to lay the carpets.

Well, it was only when one of these sort of idiots, you know, was tracing a line that he'd found in Diana's apartment to the police control room, were then the whole lot was scooped up and arrested.

-Ken has his own theory as to how Diana's private Sandringham conversation ended up in the papers.

-The technology at that time would appear to have been difficult for Reenan to have picked that up.

However, this could have been released on a loop from the government's central listening station.

-How else could the same conversation be recorded on two separate days?

-The suspicion remains, despite all the assurances from government in the past 30 years, is that somehow the security services had some hand in them.

But quite what they were trying to achieve, we can't say either, because we simply don't know who was behind it.

-To this day, the government denies spying on the royals, and any knowledge of the Squidgygate recordings remains top secret.

Coming up, Prince Charles escapes Clarence House and builds a secluded love nest.

-Put yourself in Charles's shoes.

He's now married to the love of his life, Camilla.

And they wanted a secret getaway.

-And at Saint James's Palace, the secret of how Queen Victoria changed weddings forever.

-Victoria decided to do something different.

She went in another direction.

She chose to have a white wedding dress.

-Hidden within the beautiful setting of Windsor Estate sits Frogmore Cottage -- Harry and Meghan's UK residence.

Having spent a fortune of taxpayers money renovating the property, the couple decided to withdraw from public life and spend more time in the US.

But they didn't go quietly.

-Not only did they decide they were out, but that they were going to go kicking and screaming and putting the boot in to the rest of the royal family.

-The final nail in the coffin for Harry and Meghan's Windsor home was an explosive combination of the release of Harry's memoir "Spare," and a new palace landlord.

-Of course, everything changed when the Queen died and Prince Charles became King Charles.

Not only did he become king, he also became Harry and Meghan's landlord.

-Charles took decisive action literally days after "Spare" was released.

Harry and Meghan were evicted from Frogmore Cottage.

They didn't have to leave immediately.

Charles offered an olive branch that they could stay until after the coronation, but his message was clear -- "You have upset me and this is the consequence."

-Harry stayed for one last time in Frogmore Cottage before his father's big day.

Meghan never returned.

-Normally in a family feud, there are no winners.

But in this case, there was a clear winner.

-The Crown Estate quids in.

They got a brand spanking new house and they were repaid that 2.5 million.

-A rather dilapidated, out of condition, rundown staff accommodation building has been turned into a state-of-the-art family home with five en suite bedrooms and of much greater value.

-Clever landlord and all tax efficient.

-The Frogmore eviction came less than five years after their royal wedding, watched by huge cheering crowds.

But royal weddings haven't always been the national showpiece they are today.

In fact, they were secret palace affairs until Queen Victoria came along.

-Royal weddings had always been held in intense privacy behind closed doors in the evening, but the then prime minister, Lord Melbourne, wanted to turn this into a national event, a national celebration, so he persuaded Victoria to travel to Saint James's Palace, then back to Buckingham Palace in a carriage and then from Buckingham Palace to Windsor.

And of course, this national celebration allowing everybody to come together to celebrate this royal marriage is something we still see today.

-And if we think of the impact, for example, of seeing Diana emerge from that carriage about to marry Charles, we could imagine the impact that seeing Victoria would have had.

-But the very public marriage of Victoria and Albert didn't just change royal tradition, it changed wedding traditions around the globe.

And it all came down to Victoria's revolutionary choice of wedding dress.

-Before Queen Victoria's wedding, most brides wore really bright colors -- reds, blues.

-But Victoria decided to do something different.

She went in another direction.

She chose to have a white wedding dress.

-At the time, white was not at all popular for brides to wear.

In fact, for anybody really to wear.

I mean, after all, you've got to keep it clean.

We don't have washing machines, we don't have fancy chemicals for cleaning things.

It's totally impractical.

-The color and design of the dress remained hush-hush until the day of the wedding.

-It's in two parts, with a boned bodice at the top and then a large silk skirt, which is supported underneath, but it's got unpressed pleats, so it looks very gentle, very petal-like in its shape.

Each piece is so unique, so individual.

And the patterns that had been used for Victoria's veil, her collar, her sleeves, they were absolutely distinctive to her.

What's more, the pattern was destroyed afterwards so it could never be reproduced again.

In that way, it took it's secrets with it.

-For Victoria, the white dress was also laced with symbolism.

-White is virginal.

White is pure.

In her marriage to Albert, she is going in as a sort of childlike innocence.

and reinforcing the fact that she will obey him.

She is the lesser of the couple.

She is the wife who obeys the husband, not queen of an empire.

-Victoria's image appeared on coins, in newspapers, pamphlets, on china plates, and souvenirs.

Everyone wanted to copy the new white wedding trend, but the Queen's official wedding photos hold a secret.

-Photography was still very much in its infancy when Victoria and Albert married, but 14 years later, Victoria and Albert actually re-enacted their wedding.

She squeezed herself back into the dress once again, just so photographs could be taken.

-Later in her journals, Queen Victoria would refer to her wedding as "The happiest day of my life."

-Her dress was clearly incredibly important to her, and she recycled elements from it throughout her life, so she would wear her lace flounce and her veil to the christenings of her children, her son Leopold's wedding, and also in her Diamond Jubilee portrait.

It shows her true love for Albert and the importance of that union when they married.

She asks to be buried in her veil.

-Unlike Queen Victoria, Prince Charles went for a much quieter affair for his second wedding in 2005.

But at least he followed one custom -- finding a place, or a palace, the royal couple could call their own.

-Put yourself in Charles's shoes.

He's now married to the love of his life, Camilla, and they wanted a secret getaway away from the public glare.

Charles wanted somewhere private where he could be with Camilla.

-Desperate to find a cozy escape far from the madding crowd, Prince Charles went on the hunt in 2006.

-We suddenly see him go off on this little adventure -- property adventure in Wales, because he is, contentiously, the Prince of Wales, so he should have had a property in Wales.

What was the Prince of Wales doing without a gaff in Wales?

- It might have taken him a while, but eventually he settled on a remote corner of Carmarthenshire near the Brecon Beacons.

It was here that he discovered Llwynywermod.

A dilapidated estate with a typical 18th-century coach house that ticked all the boxes.

Charles got to work renovating the property, turning it into a perfect secluded getaway.

-It's whitewashed on the outside, in a very humble and simple way, with a central door and small sash windows.

It's three bedrooms only.

It's the kind of house that children draw.

It's a complete antithesis of what you would think that a king in waiting would be looking for.

It was called Llwynywermod, the place where wormwood once used to grow in centuries past.

Sounds romantic.

You bet it was.

-Even the garden was down to earth.

-This house, you see some lovely terracotta pots by the front doors, but really lots of lovely flowering shrubs like honeysuckle, jasmine, roses.

Not too much maintenance, but rather lovely and right for a cottage garden.

-Paying heed to its humble origins, the royal couple set about sympathetically restoring their secret sanctuary.

-This project meant local labor and local materials, things like lime washes for breathable paints, insulated by sheep's wool and corn husks, a biomass boiler to burn wood waste from a nearby sawmill.

-A bit less local was their choice of designer -- Annabel Elliot, Camilla's sister.

-The central idea behind the interiors was to be as Welsh and as cottagey as possible.

So we're talking about Welsh earthenware pots, Welsh blankets, Welsh antiques.

The whole concept was a million miles away from somewhere as swanky as Buckingham Palace or Windsor.

-It does speak to that rustic, more environmental idea of the king, or the prince, as he was then.

And also it speaks of a pastoral image of Wales, a self-sustaining idea.

The woodchip boiler, the reed bed waterworks, everything looking after itself, not imported wherever it could be, made, woven, crafted in Wales.

But there's a catch.

-Charles and Camilla's love nest would be taken from them.

Coming up, we reveal what became of the King's Welsh Paradise.

-He lost it.

And you think the kings can have everything.

-And the recently discovered palace passage that hid a scandalous affair.

-One of the crucial things he did was to create a secret passage between his bedroom and that of George Villiers.

-Buying or renovating a palace is a royal prerogative, but sometimes those upgrades are a little more secret than others.

Take Apethorpe Palace, a private country house bought by Henry VIII and enjoyed by James I in the 17th century.

-James I loved it because it was in marvelous hunting grounds.

He adored hunting, but he also loved it for another reason.

And that was because in 1614, in Apethorpe Palace, James I had met George Villiers, a handsome young man who became one of James's greatest favorites.

Let's put it this way, James had an eye for male beauty.

Within a year of meeting George, the King had made him gentleman of the Bedchamber, which meant he got to hang out with the king all the time, giving him �1,000 a year, and he'd knighted him.

George Villiers was from a very minor part of society, and James was his ticket.

He was, in a way, a sugar daddy.

The two of them had this intense relationship.

The king declared to the whole court that he loved the Earl of Buckingham more than any other man.

James called Buckingham "Steenie" after St. Stephen, who, according to the Bible, had a face like an angel.

They had an intense correspondence, writing back and forth, and Villiers wrote to the King, addressing him as "Dear Dad and Gossip," and signing himself off "Your humble slave and dog."

And James addressed Villiers as "My wife."

Not quite sure what his wife thought about that.

James decided to renovate the house, making Apethorpe the only non-royal palace renovated partly on royal orders.

Later restoration on the palace found that there was a secret passage between his bedroom and that of George Villiers, away from the prying, seeing eyes of the court.

So Apethorpe Palace was where George met the Duke of Buckingham, and where they conducted a lot of their scandalous relationship, aided by the secret passage.

-Unlike James I, Prince Charles no longer needed to keep his relationship with Camilla secret and spent 15 happy years visiting their Welsh sanctuary, Llwynywermod.

Until a twist of fate meant it was taken away from him.

-It had been a great bolthole for him and Camilla.

But when he became king, he lost it.

And you think the kings can have everything.

But of course, this was bought, not by him, but by the Duchy of Cornwall.

Unfortunately, for the now King, his name wasn't on the deeds.

-The Duchy of Cornwall was set up in 1337 by King Edward III, and it was always intended to generate income for the heir to the throne.

Now back then, it was farmland and a few castles.

-Well, it really is the gift that keeps giving 'cause fast forward some 7 or 800 years... -It's grown to be an estate of 135,000 acres.

And this covers much of the West Country, the Scilly Isles, Devon, and Cornwall.

Even The Oval cricket ground.

-Overall, its property portfolio is worth over �1 billion.

-This is a thumper of an inheritance.

And that means every year, because money begets money, there is considerable profit to the tune of about �22, 23 million on an average year.

-A princely sum.

But the devil's in the detail.

-The wedding's September 2022, Charles ceased to be the Duke of Cornwall and the Prince of Wales and became the King, suddenly the property is kind of is in an estate that's supervised by his son.

-William is now the Duke of Cornwall.

That means he is in effect his father's landlord, both in Highgrove and in Wales.

So that's quite a lot of rent that the King has to pay for residences that he really doesn't have that much time to live in.

-It's interesting that something that Charles acquired only 15 years ago, William certainly isn't interested in living in or visiting.

-William says he would rather visit Wales, as he did at the time of the coronation, and spend money in their local tourism industry, on hotels.

-It was always on the cards for King Charles and Camilla.

A busy schedule and the expense of paying rent forced them to say goodbye to their romantic retreat.

On the plus side though, the Royal Cottage is now available to hire by anyone.

-Now it can be rented and used by us as members of the public.

So it's one of the most accessible royal residences, all of a sudden.

-But don't feel too sorry for the King losing his second home.

He still has seven palaces, ten castles, 12 houses, and 56 cottages to fall back on.

Next time on "Secrets of the Royal Palaces," we reveal the race to Balmoral to reach the Queen in her last moments.

-There was significant confusion about who wasn't invited.

-The Windsor Castle crime that put a princess in the dock.

-Suddenly who arrives?

The daughter of the Queen.

-And a messy end for the King who built the Tower of London.

-The sarcophagus was too small, so when they tried to stuff him in, his body actually burst.