The royal year is underway, and while January might not be the busiest month of them all, The Royal Family have been out and about as their 2019 diaries begin to fill. Royal Central has been taking a look at what they’ve been up to in January and how this royal year is starting to take shape.
First of all, a word on the numbers. We’ve totted up the total number of events listed for each member of the Royal Family in the online Court Circular on the official webpage. Every event listed is counted – so if a royal does four engagements on one day, four is added to their total. Meetings and audiences, concerts and dinners behind palace doors are all included. The only event not listed there and added to the totals was the Queen’s visit to Sandringham Women’s Institute because, after her speech not to mention that game of Pointless, we all know she went there. And now we’ve arrived at the big reveal; you get absolutely no prizes for guessing who topped the table.
Yes, the Princess Royal was the busiest Windsor in January 2019 with a total of 28 engagements. Anne’s tally is probably quite low for her, given that she clocked up 518 events in 2018, but she leads this month’s engagement count by quite a way.
Perhaps more surprising is the appearance of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge so high up on the list considering that we’ve not necessarily seen that much of either of them in public over January. However, both took on a wide range of meetings and audiences throughout the month as can be seen when the number of behind palace doors events is separated from the main tally.
We also looked at how many days each royal worked during the month as many often carry out multiple events on one day. However, this breakdown has a very familiar name at the top of the list as well.
The geographic spread of engagements was also worth noting, too. The majority of events listed for the royals took place in London. However, also visited in January were Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Somerset, Cheshire, Lancashire, Suffolk, Derbyshire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, County Durham, Powys, Surrey, Ayrshire, the Hebrides and Aberdeenshire.
There were just two overseas trips this month with the Duke of Cambridge spending two days in Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum and the Earl of Wessex travelling to Barcelona in Spain for events supporting the Duke of Edinburgh International Award Foundation.
February promises to be a much busier month with the first weeks already showing an upturn in engagements across the Royal Family.