In extracts that have been serialised by the Mail on Sunday, Ms Henshall speaks about a weekend in Balmoral, when the royals’ informal attitude surprised her. She writes: “At Balmoral, the weekend starts on Friday with drinks before dinner in the lounge, a huge room with an enormous fireplace. The sofas had removable covers, which struck me as deeply sensible because they could be washed. There were dogs everywhere, so maybe the Queen had thought ahead. I curtsied when I entered the lounge (as a dancer, I could get low!). And the Queen’s face lit up when she saw Edward.”
She adds: “That night, she was sitting on the arm of a sofa, like any other mother. She threw her arms around him and they talked about horses, the wildlife, how Edward’s work was going and I chipped in every so often.
“It slightly surprised me how informal they all were.”
This encounter appears to be slightly different from the one the Duchess of Sussex gave regarding how formal or informal the royals are behind closed doors.
Meghan spoke about how the Royal Family maintain formality even behind closed doors, as seen in her and Prince Harry’s Netflix docuseries.
In episode two, the Duchess of Sussex recalled showing her that she met the Prince and Princess of Wales for the first time and alleged that, while she was more casual given the informal setting, that did not apply to her future in-laws, which she found “jarring”.
She said: “Even when Will and Kate came over and I had met her for the first time, they came over for the first time, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot.
“I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and think, ‘OK we can relax now.’
“But that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.”
She added: “I was a hugger and have always been a hugger. I didn’t realise that that was really jarring for a lot of Brits.”