One presumes the late Queen’s permission was sought as to whether it was OK for Tom Parker Bowles to write a recipe book themed around the history of royal food. Though the man himself – author, cook, son, father, brother, stepbrother, godson, general family man, now at the heart of the family – can’t entirely recall how the process worked, but, yes, he definitely did ask, he says with a near-imperceptible eye roll. “Thanks for checking.
” “It was about when the late Queen’s jubilee was,” he recalls, of “running it up the flagpole” with the royal household in early 2022, and getting the official go-ahead to detail the eating habits of monarchs from Queen Victoria onwards (reader tip: get the aspic ready). “It was her final [jubilee]. I can’t remember which,” he recalls.
“Diamond, maybe?” Platinum, Tom. “ Platinum ! That’s right.” He smiles, hyper-nonchalant, always respectful.
Classic TPB. We’re sat at the corner table (of course) of 45 Jermyn St (of course) at 11am, a sodden St James’s looking untouched by time behind him. Two years on from getting the all-clear to pen Cooking & The Crown and now he is the son of a Queen himself (a scattering of Her Majesty ’s recipes even appear – one is for porridge).
It’s a turn of events that feels as soothing in its narrative arc as it does unimaginable when you compare it to his explosion into public life in the ’90s, back when King Charles III was his godfather (His Majesty married Cami.