#25 KELLOGG'S

I don’t eat cereal. We might as well get that out into the open now. One of the things that disgusts me most in life is to see someone else fill a bowl with cereal and then cover it in milk. There’s a certain smell to it I can’t handle, not to mention something very graphic and disturbing about the noise of someone chewing on grains soaked in liquid. If this person is really into their cereal—like my husband and son sometimes are—they might even end this treat by drinking the milk out of the bowl. That’s when I have to leave the room. I guess this aversion makes me a really strange, suspect kind of person. Most people think so. That’s why for months I’ve been avoiding a Royal Warrant I’m not sure what to do with: Kellogg’s. The American cereal company has held a warrant from HM the Queen, since 1955, as “Purveyors of Cereals.”

The best possible outcome for my experimentation with Kellogg’s cereal would be that I come away from this project actually liking cereal, right? If I start eating it with milk, even better. If you’re holding your breath expecting this conclusion, I should let you down now. This isn’t the same story as Wilkin & Son’s. But it’s still a great story. Do you know anything about Kellogg’s? I didn’t. This is a fantastic company with an amazing history.

The cereal company got its start in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the late 19^th century, at a sanitarium connected with the Seventh Day Adventist church. The sanitarium offered a program of physical exercise and convalescence to strengthen patients sick with myriad diseases. According to The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (a book I found somewhat offensive both because of the corn-on-the-cob on its cover and the entries on “Kentucky Fried Chicken” and “ketchup” that followed that on “Kellogg’s”), its famous patients included Henry Ford, J.C. Penney, and Thomas Edison. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg managed the institution and worked in the so-called “experimental kitchen and food laboratories in which original research is constantly bringing out new facts and products.” Kellogg eschewed the typical diet of late 19^th century Americans, which he believed to be too heavy on meat and dairy products. He instead advocated a vegetarian lifestyle and the benefits of eating fiber. Kellogg worked to make grains more palatable for the sanitarium’s invalid patients, many of who could not chew hard, crunchy grains. Together with his brother William Keith (W.K.), he invented flaked cereal by pressing grains of wheat and corn between rollers to flatten them before baking them in the oven.  

According to the company’s website, W.K. Kellogg began Kellogg’s in 1906. As American consumers shifted from eating protein-heavy breakfasts to those that centered on whole grains, Kellogg’s continued to expand its presence in a growing market by catchy advertising campaigns. The company also sold each box of its cereal with W.K.’s signature appearing on the front so that customers could distinguish his boxes of cereal from his many competitors’.

 

Kellogg’s also introduced popular new products like Bran Flakes in 1915 and Rice Krispies in 1923. It was in the early 1920s that Kellogg’s first began selling its cereal in the United Kingdom. The company has remained relevant through especially difficult decades in American history by responding to them effectively. During the Great Depression, Kellogg cut the average workday of his workers and added a fourth shift to his factory in Battle Creek to spread money among more workers. In the 1940s the company produced K-rations for American soldiers serving in World War II. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Kellogg’s continued to introduce brand names that are still household names today: Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, Special K, Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Pop-Tarts among them. It responded to the nutrition and fitness crazes of the 1970s and 80s by continuing to emphasize the nutritional value of its low-fat, high fiber whole grain products. At the turn of the century, Kellogg’s remained relevant by acquiring new brands: among them Bear Naked, Kashi, and Gardenburger.

So many of these Royal Warrant holders have a company story marked by a time of intense prosperity and then decline. If Kellogg’s is currently in decline, is a thing of the past, that’s not obvious. Just last year the company made an aggressive move into the world of snack foods by acquiring the Pringles brand from fellow Royal Warrant holder Proctor & Gamble. A company with historical roots in a small sanitarium in Michigan is today a worldwide powerhouse.

This mention of sanitariums reminded me of Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece. When I read Robert Lacey’s biography of Queen Elizabeth, Monarch, I was struck by the paragraphs describing the very difficult life Alice had after her family was forced out of Greece. Alice suffered an emotional breakdown after her marriage ended, and she spent a good deal of time in a Swiss sanitarium under the care of Sigmund Freud. Philip’s relationship with his mother was strained; she was remarkably absent from his young life because of her own problems. When an aged and declining Alice came to live with the royal family at Buckingham Palace in the 1960s, it was awkward to say the least.

Lacey writes, maybe somewhat coyly, that Alice “added an illuminating dimension to the family life.”  Alice was near-deaf and a chronic smoker, and her presence was often announced by “clouds of tobacco smoke, accompanied by fits of bronchitic coughing.” Alice had founded an order of Greek nursing nuns, and before her death she took to wearing the habit associated with their order. The image of a Greek nun smoking and playing her favorite card game, Canasta, in Buckingham Palace created something of a spectacle, as did Alice’s tendency to fight bitterly with Philip even if she did call him by his childhood nickname of “Bubbikins.”

Princess Alice might have spent her last years acting just as flakey as the cereal invented by the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek, but she was welcomed at Buckingham Palace. According to Lacey, Queen Elizabeth was respectful and kind to her ostentatious mother-in-law and known to keep her company and chat with her animatedly.  Members of the palace staff wondered how they could communicate so easily since Alice was so hard of hearing. Lacey writes that “Elizabeth II enjoyed getting to know her unusual husband’s highly unusual mother, and she supported her religious charities generously” and that they were known to have animated conversations “despite her deafness.” The young princes Edward and Andrew grew fond of their grandmother and frequently went to her quarters to play Chinese Checkers.

It’s really interesting that a family so concerned with its image, with how it looks to other people, made room for someone like Princess Alice and ignored her oddities. It wasn’t until well after Princess Alice’s death in 1969 that the royal family learned just how deserving she was of her last comfortable days in the palace. Lacey writes that: “the princess had given shelter, while living in Nazi-occupied Athens, to the widow and children of Haimaki Cohen, an Athenian Jew, rebuffing the enquiries of suspicious gestapo agents by playing up her deafness and appearing to be less than bright. She saved the Cohens from transportation...”

I’m left wondering (and maybe Queen Elizabeth was too) if Princess Alice wasn’t also playing up her deafness and pretending to be less than bright while she lived at Buckingham Palace with the royal family. Was the smoking, card-playing nun pulling one over on her uptight Protestant relatives each time they turned their backs? I hope so. Or maybe Alice’s age and lack of inhibition finally left her room to freely be herself, just as unique as W.K. Kellogg hoped his signature would appear on every box of his cereal.

Where to Buy: Literally anywhere.

#24 SWEDISH MATCH INDUSTRIES

 

I wrote several months ago about my mother-in-law bringing back a huge bag of Royal Warrant products for me after she took a work trip to England. I’ve mostly exhausted the list of what I got—with my entries on Heinz, Charbonnel etWalker, Robinson’s barley water, and Brasso metal polish to show for it—but there are still a few items left. The strangest is a box of Bryant & May matches. Swedish Match Industries has held a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen since 1972 as “Match Manufacturers.”

Matches have fallen out of fashion a bit, don’t you think? People don’t smoke cigarettes as much now as they used to, and if they do they’re much more likely to use lighters than to reach for a matchbook. We have one of those long-handled lighters that we use to light candles around our house, and other than that we don’t have much need for a device that can start a good quick fire. That’s why I was surprised by how taken I’ve become with my little box of Bryant & May matches. I admit I’m rationing them and I’ll be sad when they run out.

What would make one match better than another, or better than an American variety you could go get at Walgreens right this second? I’m happy to tell you. For starters (that’s a pun), these are the fastest-lighting matches I’ve ever seen. Ready, set, done. Anyone who’s ever gone through three or four of those cheap matchbook matches before successfully lighting a candle or a cigarette knows what I’m talking about. A match that doesn’t want to light is a pain in the ass. When these matches light up, they do it with so much gusto that I’m reminded of lighting a sparkler on the 4^thof July.* They sizzle and pop with the most satisfying sound, and each time I wonder for a split second if the match I’m holding is about to start shooting off little pink or green or blue fire stars. This week I’ve also been reminded of the ritual of lighting a match—of needing to be responsible and somewhat grown-up to do it and of doing something that you don’t usually do unless for a special occasion: a candle-lit Valentine’s dinner with someone you’re crazy about, lighting a bright wax number on a child’s birthday cake, or finding yourself a quick source of light should the power go out. I’m also really keen on the great smell they give off when you first light them. You don’t get that from a lighter.

Even if I like my matches, I admit I’m not so taken with the box they come in. The photograph on the front shows four people, all dressed in white, just sort of standing around outside near the ocean. Presumably they’re…having a barbecue? But you don’t know because you can’t see any food or anything like a grill or a spatula or a set of tongs, and ultimately it’s just sort of a tease. What are those people doing out there? I ask myself each time I look at the matches.

 

Even odder than this incomplete picture is a small red box containing a stick figure with a flame on its arm and neck. The text next to that reads: DANGER! FIRE KILLS CHILDREN.

Errr…yes. Yes, it does. This is one of the more obvious warnings I’ve read on a product in a long time. It’s almost as good as that warning you sometimes see on packages of peanuts that they were processed in a facility containing nuts.

But back to DANGER! FIRE KILLS CHILDREN. Everyone can agree that a child shouldn’t be playing with this box of matches. What’s maybe not so obvious when it comes to what harms children is, well, bad parenting. Take, for instance, the astounding amount of literature criticizing the parenting methods of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip. Every biography I’ve read of the Queen or her children opines about their parenting skills. At first I completely ignored these sections of her biographies, specifically any criticism of her. So what if she left a very young baby with a nanny so she could tour the world? That’s what royals do, maybe. So what if they sent Prince Charles off to a boarding school in northern Scotland—Gordonstoun, which was the subject of an article last month that revealed anew just how much he hated the place—instead of to nearby Eton, so that he could make a man out of himself at the tender age of 13? What business is that of mine, right? So what if Philip was aloof and rarely present for Charles, so that Philip’s uncle and a close family friend—Dickie Mountbatten—stepped into this fatherly role, especially once Charles was in his 20s? Maybe I just don’t have the full story. But...I guess I’m starting to lose my nerve apologizing for these people.

If you can throw a rock and hit someone with a nasty story to tell about the Queen’s parenting, it’s comparatively harder to dig up anything about Bryant & May. The company dates back to the mid-1800s, when its factories in London and Australia supplied matches to the British Empire. The East End factory is most famous for the strike that took place there in 1888, led by its mostly female workers who demanded better working conditions. If you’re interested, Louise Raw’s 2009 book Striking a Match: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and Their Place in History is a fantastic read. 

Bryant & May underwent a series of mergers with other, competing matchmaking companies beginning in 1901, and full ownership of the company was taken by Swedish Match in 1987. The factories in London, Australia, Liverpool, and Northern Ireland (a photo of the former one in London, below, was taken by Fen Fahey), were closed down in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The company name is still registered by Swedish Match, but there’s not much more left of it. A unique collection of Bryant & May matches, as well as older fire-starting devices from around the world, can be found at the Science Museum in South Kensington.
 

It strikes me (that's another pun, and I'm sorry) that I'm not getting what I want this week, either from learning more about the royal family or from researching these matches that I love so much. The royal family just doesn’t often look good on paper; it’s flaws and foibles are so ugly and obvious. You don’t have to look very hard to bump into them. The Bryant & May company as it exists today is somewhat similar. Despite its long history, it’s now owned by a Swedish company that doesn’t make its matches domestically and that also produces a wide array of cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Neither of these stories is one I particularly want to tell.

Where to buy: I honestly think you can only buy these in the UK. If I'm wrong, I’d love to know.

*Is it in good taste for an American writing a blog about British royals to mention the 4^thof July? Maybe not.

#23 TATE & LYLE PLC

There are people who don’t need to eat large amounts of sugar and saturated fat to get through the dark and dismal winter months. Those people are alcoholics. If you’re not an alcoholic and you’re looking for something to keep you busy while you’re stuck inside for the next few weeks, you might turn to baking, which I’ve done recently. Tate & Lyle plc, the maker of Lyle’s golden syrup, holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Sugar Refiners.”

Lyle’s golden syrup is one of those quintessentially British foods for which Americans don’t really have a substitute. The British seem to use it in the same way we might use Karo syrup here—in baking, in sauces, in lieu of maple syrup on pancakes. Maybe the most appealing thing about buying Lyle’s is that it doesn’t appear to be made of corn. In the United States, everything is made from corn. This sweetener that doesn’t rely on it seems like something special to me.

And it is special. The company’s history dates back to 1881, when Abram Lyle and his three sons began operating an English sugar refinery on the banks of the Thames. In 1883 they first invented their golden syrup, which they refined from the sweet and sticky liquid produced by sugar refining. The company registered its “lion and bees” trademark symbol in 1904 and has used it ever since; it’s a reference to the Old Testament story of Samson in the Bible. Between the two world wars, Abram Lyle & Sons merged with another sugar refinery, Henry Tate & Sons. (Tate was the same Tate who the famous British art museums were named after). The company has held a Royal Warrant since 1922.

I first heard of Lyle’s golden syrup a few years ago because one of my co-workers at my first job in Chicago was British. He knew I loved baking, so one day he put in a special request for a dessert called caramel slice. I had no trouble finding recipes for this yummy caramel-filled and chocolate-covered shortbread bar (the name “slice” is most commonly used in Australia, where it refers to a bar cookie), but I did have trouble finding golden syrup. I finally gave up and used corn syrup, and that turned out to be a disaster. The caramel filling was way too runny, and the taste was all wrong. My friend was nice about it, but he finally admitted it was nothing like the dessert he remembered from home.

I tried my first caramel slice two summers ago in London at Café Nero, that ubiquitous London coffee chain with a shop in Westminster. I’ve wanted to get my hands on a decent caramel slice ever since, and I admit this is one of the royal warrant products I most wanted to try when I began this blog. I’ve been so thrilled with it all the way around—the surprisingly vibrant and beautiful copper color of the syrup when I opened the tin, the smooth and satiny caramel sauce I made on my stovetop last weekend, and the fantastic bar cookies Adam and I have been snacking on all week.

The recipes I pulled and combined to make my own caramel slice hybrid all came from Australian cooking websites. I found myself getting pulled into their quirky derivation of the English language: the absence of articles before nouns; the use of the metric system in the kitchen—which seems so odd to Americans dependent on the oddities of the English system; and the reference to exotic food products like copha, a vegetable shortening made from coconut oil. My Internet foray into Australia made me think about Australia when it was part of the British Empire, when it was one of many distant lands under the rule of the English monarchy.

 

To educate myself more about British imperialism, I checked out Piers Brendon’s fabulous new book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997. This book is a tome, which I will either never finish or will owe the Chicago Public Library a large amount of fines for, or both, but I couldn’t resist bringing it home this week. If you think about it, and Brendon has done a lot of that, the story of the United Kingdom in the 20^th century is the story of a crumbling modern empire. While Queen Elizabeth has served for decades as a consistent and unifying tour de force for the British monarchy, she’s also watched as her country has lost a good deal of power and control on the world stage. Without this vast empire to govern—and with a fully capable Parliament handling law-making—many wonder how the monarchy can continue to function without it too crumbling, just like the flaky shortbread crust of so many caramel slices.

Where to buy: I ordered my little tin of golden syrup on Amazon. In Chicago, I've seen it for sale at Spencer's Jolly Posh Foods.

Caramel Slice

Shortbread crust:

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour

Caramel filling:

1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 T. Lyle’s golden syrup
½ cup butter

Topping:

1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine butter and sugar, then flour, until the mixture is crumbly and has several pea-sized pieces. Grease the bottom and sides of a 13x9” pan and press shortbread mixture into an even layer in the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until shortbread is firm but still soft. Let cool.

On stovetop, combine milk, golden syrup, and butter and bring to a boil over medium heat. Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, for five more minutes, until caramel mixture has thickened. Pour over cooled shortbread crust and refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

Melt chocolate in a double broiler or in the microwave and pour over firm caramel layer. Refrigerate for another hour before cutting bars into squares. Tip: Don’t wait too long to cut these; the harder the chocolate gets, the harder they are to cut.

#22 COCA-COLA INTERNATIONAL SALES LIMITED

I probably already know what you're thinking. Coke? Someone gave a Royal Warrant to Coke? Why? I'm reminded of the Britvic controversy over whether something as mundane as a soft drink deserves royal attention. I'm tempted to ignore this one. Still, I don't know much about the British side of this business, and it's possible you don't either. That could be interesting. So let's hear it out. Coca-Cola International Sales Limited holds a Royal Warrant from HM the Queen as Suppliers of Soft Drinks, and it has since 1972.

Coca-Cola has gotten nothing if not negative press in the past few years, due mainly to research linking sugary soda consumption to obesity. This bad press is having more of a profound effect than I realized. In doing some research for this post the other day, I stumbled upon a graph on The Atlantic that illustrated just how sharply sales of soda have fallen in the past decade. In the United States alone, revenue has dropped 40%.

On Coca-Cola UK's website, there seems to be widespread acknowledgement of the health concerns of drinking soda, diet or otherwise. In addition to addressing obesity and diabetes, the website also offers information about bone health, tooth decay, and other potential problems related to drinking soda.

If you're watching your weight and you don't like diet soda, you may be interested to know that I found a nice little loophole on the UK Coke website. Ever calculated your body mass index (BMI) and been less than happy with the results? Maybe you're using the wrong website. I'm a pretty thin 5'10", 130 pounds, which gives me a BMI of 18.7. In the United States, this is an acceptable BMI; you're considered underweight if you dip below 18.5. In the UK? You should be above 20, or at least that's what the BMI calculator on Coke UK's website told me.

"They're letting people be fatter over there!" I told Adam excitedly just now.

"Well..." he replied.

It's a bit cumbersome to use Coke's calculator if you don't know your weight in stone, but you can use an easy Google convertor to figure it out.

If Coca-Cola's looser guidelines for checking your weight haven't convinced you of how thin you are, of how perfectly fine it would be for you to drink their full-calorie soft drinks as part of a healthful diet, you're not alone. Queen Elizabeth's daughter, Princess Anne, apparently gave the stuff up right around the same time the company was granted a Royal Warrant. In a now out-of-print biography of Anne written by Anne Matheson and Reginald Davis and titled Princess Anne: A Royal Girl of Our Time (I know), the authors share that Anne "used to enjoy a refreshing glass of coke but this, along with other foods like sugar and potatoes, she was encouraged to give up."

Before we get any further, I really feel the need to make a confession. To ask out loud a question I've had in my head since I began this blog. Just who is this Princess Anne? Have you ever heard of her before? I didn't even know Queen Elizabeth had a daughter until seven months ago. With all the attention given to the British royal family in this country, that seems so completely impossible that I've been asking around all over the place trying to find someone who knows who she is. The other day one of my co-workers made a reference to the Queen Mother, and I jumped all over it.

"The Queen Mother? That's a pretty specific reference to the royal family. Do you know who Princess Anne is?"

He hesitated. "Princess Anne?"

"Princess Anne."

"She's...the Queen's...sister?"

"No."

"Her aunt?"

"No. Her daughter."

"Wouldn't have thought that."

No one thinks that. In America, people under 40 just simply don't know who this woman is. To get a view of people over 40--people just slightly over 40, of course--I decided to ask my mom about Anne. She had no idea who I was talking about either. Consider also the results of my New York Times query, in which the most recent article about her was from 1992. That’s the year I finished fourth grade.

Anne is actually a pretty big deal in the UK. She makes more visits on behalf of the Crown than any other member of the royal family. She's a great equestrian, as is her daughter Zara Phillips. She’s had her share of media attention too. Her wedding to Mark Phillips in 1973 garnered national and international press, much like Kate and William’s wedding did more recently. (By the way, you have to watch this footage of their wedding. Do it right now). She’s out there in the public eye...but we’re just never hearing about her in the U.S.

I can't argue I have a good explanation for American inattention to Anne, but I think it has a lot to do with the birth of Prince Andrew in 1960. Before his birth and after her mother's coronation, Anne was second in line to the British throne, after her brother Charles. Matheson and Davis refer to Andrew as "the baby who was to change the whole course of her life." At that time, the law dictated the a male heir would trump a female heir, so Anne was off the hook, so to speak. In America it seems we only ever hear news of those directly in line to take over the throne, while the other members of the royal family live way back in the shadows. Maybe that's lucky for them.

Coke's product line strikes me as somewhat similar. When I think about Coca-Cola, I think about Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite, but the global company makes a whole host of healthier drinks, including Dasani bottled water, Honest Tea (that super expensive bottled tea you see at Whole Foods), and Simply Orange (love that stuff!). In the UK specifically they make Powerade and Vitamin Water, in addition to juices like Kia-Ora and 5 Alive. See? Sometimes the good ones are off in the shadows.

Where to Buy: You can find quintessentially British juice brands like 5 Alive on Brit Superstore. Kia-Ora seems much harder to find stateside.

#21 HAMLEYS

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about toys. Post-Christmas, our house is ridiculously full of them. Nathan now sleeps with three stuffed animal dogs (two of them were gifts for Nicholas, mind you), plays with a fully-stocked kitchen, and uses a train table to run a railroad network as extensive as the one on the Island of Sodor. Our living room is covered with Legos and Elmo puzzle pieces, and our hallway resembles a parking garage for rideable toy trains. There was a time, pretty long ago, that Buckingham Palace and the other royal residences didn’t look much different. What was the toy store of choice to purchase gifts for the royal children? Hamleys, of course. For decades the British toy superstore held Royal Warrants—from the Queen Mother for supplying toys to Elizabeth and Margaret, and later to Queen Elizabeth for her own children. 
 

When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip moved Charles and Anne into Buckingham Palace in 1952, they tried their best to recreate the nursery in their former home, Clarence House. It was “stuffed with handed-down royal toys—a model of Gibraltar with a working railway, cast-off royal garments to be used as dressing-up clothes, a miniature car.” Maybe some of Charles and Anne’s toys were hand-me-down’s, but this certainly wasn’t true of all of them. Hamleys took great pride in the fact that, when her children were small, the Queen was a devoted customer. The store does not currently hold a Royal Warrant—maybe because the royal family has so few small children to spoil these days? I wonder if the baby about to be born in July will prompt the Queen or Prince Charles to again patronize the long-famous store.

To write about Hamleys in a way that would make any sense at all to Americans, I needed to get over two pretty major hurdles: 1.) convince Hamleys to ship their products to America, even though their website says they’ll only ship to the UK and Europe and 2.) figure out a way to describe a place I’ve never visited. To solve the first problem I emailed customer service and within just a few hours received a thoughtful response and a very good solution:

“Although we don't deliver to the US from our online website, you can place orders from our Regent Street store over the phone, and have them shipped to you in the US from there. If you would like to do that, please feel free to call us on 0871 704 1977, select the option for the Regent Street store, and we can then put you through to the appropriate floor in Regent Street to make a purchase.”

Problem solved. To get over the next hurdle, I enlisted my friend Katie. If my friend Beth was exactly the kind of person you’d want to take with you to a dog show, Katie turns out to be exactly the kind of person you’d want to run an errand for you in the West End. She promised me on Monday that she’d try to get there “sometime this week” but when I woke up Tuesday I already had emails from her with great photos and even a short essay detailing her experience. She seems somewhat keen on becoming a regular England-based correspondent for this blog, and it goes without saying that she is hired. She will be paid in McVitie’s dark chocolate digestive biscuits. 

Let’s turn it over to Katie now:
 

“To say that Hamleys is the FAO Schwartz of yesteryear on cocaine would be a bit of an understatement. I HATE going in Hamleys. I do it twice a year (because my kids LOVE everything I hate about it), but that’s about all I can tolerate. It’s definitely an experience, though!

The whole “Hamleys” experience is built around and for the kids. They have every toy you could ever imagine (and many you’d never even imagined were possible), and they are all on display to play with and try out. That’s the cool part. What’s more, there is a ratio of about 1 Hamleys employee for every five shoppers who is lurking around every corner to throw a Glitter Fairy in your face or poke you with their magic wand, or say “HEY THERE! Turn that frown upside down - YOU’RE IN HAMLEYS!!!” Thus, the reason I hate the store. This time, I had a guy stand in front of the escalator with his magic wand so that I had to run into his wand, and when I inevitably ran into his wand at the end of the escalator he said, “WHY did you just run right into my magic wand? You didn’t even try and move out of the way?! HAHAHA!” They have kids’ music blaring on the loud speakers, which causes the employees to sing along and spontaneously break into dance and of course, try to get you to dance along. Everyone wants to “help” you shop, and everyone tries to sell you something else. So, if you happen to bring your kids along, it becomes a VERY difficult battle of the wills to escape with JUST the doll (or My Little Pony, or whatever) you went in there to buy.”

(Isn’t she fabulous? Seriously, she nailed it.)

I wanted to know a little more about the store and its connection to the Royal Warrant, so I enjoyed reading this timeline on the store’s website. Hamleys was begun as part of the dream of toy-lover William Hamley, who opened a toy store called Noah’s Ark in London in 1760. His grandsons carried on the tradition by opening another toy store called the Joy Emporium, which was popular in London during Queen Victoria’s reign. Although the store was forced to close during the Great Depression, Walter Lines bought the store and reopened it as Hamleys. It was awarded its first Royal Warrant in 1938 by Queen Mary, and during the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth as a “Toys and Sports Merchant.”

If we know now that Hamleys in its present form is a bit...intense...maybe we’re lucky we Americans don’t have much access to it other than ordering online or via the telephone. Surely they can’t poke a wand at you over the phone? As I write this entry sitting on a couch next to two dinosaurs and a stack of children’s books, I’m thinking maybe I’m lucky I have no need to be in the British equivalent of FAO Schwartz on crack anytime soon. 

Where to buy: See the instructions above for having orders shipped from the Regent Street store in London to your home in the United States. If you’re in the UK or mainland Europe, you’re in luck; Hamleys happily delivers to you already.

#20 CHARBONNEL ET WALKER

I guess it wouldn’t be January without sweeping plans for self-transformation and long lists of New Year’s resolutions. The usual items are there—eat more fruits & vegetables, less sugar; do more exercising and less lounging around—so much so that I heard eight different news programs this week about how I should go about revamping myself. Maybe it’s reaching the wise old age of 30, or maybe it’s the fact that running after two kids has me down to my college weight, but I’m really not interested in hearing dieting and exercise tips this week. On the off chance that you’re getting a little tired of it too, I promise you’ve found a safe haven here. This week we’re not going to talk about an exercise regimen (although it really is important and I really do endorse such a habit) or about dieting (diets are usually miserable failures) but about chocolate.

“Are you kidding me? I’m tired of chocolate,” you might be protesting.

I get that. We’ve all sort of overloaded on sweets lately. We’re fresh off the holidays. That’s why I want to make clear that I’m targeting the select few of you who—like me—actually aren’t tired of chocolate right now. You could never get tired of chocolate. Like me you’ve stashed away the good stuff you received in stockings and gift bags: boxes of Moonstruck Chocolates, individually wrapped Baci truffles, tins of Ghirardelli hot cocoa, and Ritter Sport bars with whole hazelnuts (like the one I consumed between 2 and 5 pm yesterday). You’re freezer is not lacking in buckeye candy, fudge, or chocolate-covered Oreos either. You’re not looking for a way to get rid of the stuff. Just the opposite—you’re hoarding it. This week I’m writing to you, fellow chocolate addicts. This week is for us. Charbonnel et Walker holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen (and has since 1970) as “Chocolate Manufacturers.”

I first heard of Charbonnel et Walker a couple of summers ago when I read about it in Eugenia Bell’s beautiful little guidebook called The Traditional Shops and Restaurants of London. Bell recommends stopping by the storefront in the busy Royal Arcade of Piccadilly Circus. The historical narrative she tells of the store is wonderful. In 1873 King Edward VII was responsible for uniting the confectionery duo of Madame Charbonnel of Paris and Mrs. Walker of London. During a visit to France, he loved Mme. Charbonnel’s chocolates so much that he persuaded her to relocate herself and her chocolate-making talents to his city, making Charbonnel et Walker one of the very first chocolate producers in the country. Bell recommends trying the drinking chocolate—which I’ve unfortunately never sampled—or a small pink box of champagne truffles. The really special thing about these truffles is that the round boxes they come in are made to look like old-fashioned powder cosmetic boxes. The truffles inside are milky and decadent and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

The story of how Charbonnel et Walker truffles have stayed on the list of Royal Warrants is also an interesting one. The Queen Mother was apparently a huge fan, and passed her fondness for them onto her daughter. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon—dubbed the Queen Mother, or sometimes just the Queen Mum, after her husband’s death in 1952—was a well-liked figure in the United Kingdom ever since her marriage to Prince Albert in 1923. Their marriage was somewhat unusual since it broke the longstanding tradition of royals marrying royals, e.g. some distant cousin from another European royal family. Albert married an English girl (much like Prince William did three years ago), and the country was delighted with his choice. In the 50 years between her husband’s death and her own in 2002, the Queen Mother continued to elevate and strengthen the image of the English monarchy. She was known for being easygoing, for her good sense of humor, and for her sweet tooth. She also helped eased her daughter’s transition into becoming a ruling monarch. Elizabeth’s father was dead and her entire life was changing in the early 1950s, but none of this change happened without her mother by her side.

This is an excellent week for me to offer an opinion about Charbonnel et Walker truffles because I’m surrounded by all of my usual favorites. How do they measure up? They’re good...but they’re certainly not at the top of my list. I really like variety in my chocolates, and I think it’s fair to say these lack the flare and innovation I love so much about Moonstruck Chocolates, based out of Portland, Oregon. If you haven’t tried these, you absolutely should. Right away—go order some. And I’m not just saying that because Charbonnel et Walker have ignored all of my polite emails asking more about their company history.

(Still, if I’m completely honest, I’ll point out that the only photo I have of the inside of my own box of milk chocolate truffles shows it looking pretty empty.)

Where to buy: The availability of Charbonnel et Walker truffles in America is a relatively new thing. You can order from Saks Fifth Avenue. From time to time I also see them at Williams-Sonoma.

#19 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS UK LIMITED

I’m worried we’ve veered off course here at Middle Class Monarchs and that we’ve stayed off course for several weeks. It probably started with the dog show, but in my defense that was a fabulous dog show. Anyway, there was a time when I was using these Royal Warrant products to tell a neat, chronological story about Queen Elizabeth’s life. It wasn’t something I expected to do when I started this project, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was working. I really loved feeling like we were going somewhere. This week it’s time to pick up our story where we left off. The year is 1952. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip have two small children: Charles and Anne. Elizabeth’s father has just died and she’s become the queen of England sooner than she ever expected. Plans for a formal coronation ceremony are in full force. How do we tie Samsung into the story? It could be tricky. Samsung holds a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen as “Supplier of Televisions and Audio Visual Products.”

The Royal Family has a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with television. For the past 60 years they’ve attempted to keep this medium at arm’s length and to keep their members away from its harsh glare, but anyone who's seen even the recent reports about the Duchess of Cambridge’s pregnancy or any of Prince Harry’s latest missteps knows those attempts have obviously been futile. As plans for her coronation were being made in the summer of 1952, Queen Elizabeth at first refused to have the whole thing televised as it played out in Westminster Abbey. Her husband and the Archbishop of Canterbury were in agreement, and for multiple reasons. The Queen viewed the religious ceremony as something that should largely be kept sacred and private. Portions of the coronation—such as when the Archbishop anointed the upper part of her chest—were personal. It was also thought that all of the lights needed to televise the ceremony would make the Queen uncomfortably hot. The monarchy and the church ultimately viewed television as vulgar and common; it had no place in such sacred ceremonial occasions. The Queen didn’t want her coronation televised, so it wasn’t going to be televised.

But that didn’t go over so well. In the fall of 1952 the decision not to televise was finally shared with the press, and the subsequent outcry against the decision was both strong and stunning. In his biography of the Queen, Robert Lacey shares that “the ban was front-page news in every newspaper, and the editorials condemned it with remarkable unanimity.” The Queen was forced to change her decision. While there was some compromise—BBC cameras never took close-up shots of her face, and they turned away during such private moments as her anointing and her communion—the cameras were present for live coverage of the entire event. (You can view some of the footage—some portions are in black and white, some in color—here). In the war over how close they could get to the monarchy, the public won the battle over the coronation.

Samsung is brand new to the list of Royal Warrant holders, as you can see from this press release added to the company’s website last winter. Since 2006 the company has supplied “more than 100 premium TV and AV products to the Royal residences.” If the Queen at one time thought that television was too vulgar to be part of the life of the monarchy, her decision to award a Royal Warrant to a supplier of televisions suggests her opinion has softened. I’ve read claims that her favorite television shows to watch are those like Coronation Street, the popular British soap opera. Unlike typical American soap operas—where everyone is wealthy and successful—in the UK these shows depict more common people grappling with the pressures of everyday life. However, in a 2001 visit to the set of another popular British soap, EastEnders, the Queen and Prince Philip admitted to knowing very little about the show and to rarely watching it. 

Perhaps the Queen only needs so many televisions because she wants to monitor what is being said about her and her family...but I like to think she’s just as addicted to Downton Abbey as we are.

Where to buy: Samsung televisions are available at most American electronics retailers, although the company’s website promises better deals if you buy online.