Palace Papers Excerpt

The British work ethic is a frustration for any alpha American hellbent on “hitting the ground running.” There is undoubtedly still a quota if drippy debs hanging around the Palace employ who clock in at ten and amble home at five. A former government official told me that transplants from the frenzied pace of the political world or the civil service use a spell in a Palace job as a way to knock off early. One who rotated out observed to me: “In Palace culture, a two-hour visit to a community center is regarded as a full day and there’s a week to talk about it first.”

“They just couldn’t deal with Meghan’s level of directness,” a Palace source explained to me. In other words, “Why didn’t that invite go out?” rather than “I wonder if you could just check if that invitation did in fact go out if you don’t mind, Allegra?”

“Either not understanding how to get what she needed done, or thinking she had more seniority. What it was, I’m sure that almost everywhere she turned she was banging into a wall, and simply did not know how to handle it. And after a while, the graciousness just disappears when you constantly make wrong turns.”

From The Palace Papers by Tina Brown