CITY AND SUBURBAN
The Palace needs better advice, and looks for it in the City
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Iwatch with fascination as the Palace opens up its lines to the City. This was borne in on me the other day when I found my friend Charles Anson lending a touch of class to the Circle Line. He was plucked out of the Diplomatic Service to be direc- tor of public relations at merchant bankers Kleinwort Benson. Now, so he told me, he has been plucked out of Kleinworts to be Press Secretary to the Queen. I would not have his new job for all the tea at a garden Party, but doubtless the Palace feels that if he can handle the banking press, he can handle the bonking press. (Not that the two activities are mutually exclusive.) Charles Anson does not say so, but I see his appointment as fitting into a pattern. Robert Fellowes, the Queen's new Private Secretary — her chief of staff and, apart from her ministers, her principal adviser is an old money-market hand from Cater Allen, with a brother still in the market at Gerrard & National. There, Sir Peter Miles was a director before looking after the royal finances as Keeper of the Privy Purse. Sir John Riddell is coming back to Credit Suisse First Boston as vice chair- man, after his spell as Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales. I should like to think that all this represents a conscious attempt by the Palace to broaden the range and heighten the quality of its staff-work. It cannot afford to depend, as much as it seems to, on courtly families and seconded officers from the Services — their experi- ence necesssarily limited, and their vision sometimes curtailed by the sharp down- ward slope of the peaks of their regimental caps. A systematic recruitment policy may be needed — graduate recruitment in- cluded. The Palace ought to be casting its line over the pools of talent where the Treasury fishes — or the merchant banks. Just as they do, the Court should be seen to offer careers open to ambition and talent. Again, I should like to think that the new men will, with appropriate respect, say so.
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