Why Princess Anne Doesn't Shake Hands on Royal Walkabouts
The walkabout is a fixture of most royal tours and out-of-town visits, but that wasn't always the case. Before the Queen started the practice of walking the rope line and greeting members of the public face-to-face in the 1970s, the royal family simply drove from destination to destination by car, and fans were lucky to catch a glimpse as the car rode past.
Princess Anne is interviewed about the history of the walkabout in the new documentary Queen of the World, and let's just say the Queen's daughter doesn't hold back in her thoughts on how the practice has changed over the years.
"We never shook hands. The theory was that you couldn’t shake hands with everybody, so don’t start," Anne says in the film, speaking of the earliest iteration of the royal walkabout.
"So I kind of stick with that, but I noticed others don’t. It's not for me to say that it's wrong, but I think the initial concept was that it was patently absurd to start shaking hands. And it seems to me that it's become a shaking hands exercise rather than a walkabout if you see what I mean, so that it has changed," she said.
Indeed, Anne's relatives do often shake hands with the public. For example, here's a photo of Prince Charles mid-grip during a walkabout in Northumberland earlier this month.
A post shared by Clarence House (@clarencehouse) on Sep 12, 2018 at 8:52am PDT
But Anne prefers to keep things hands-off.
The Princess Royal also made her opinions known about people who try to take photos on phones and iPads during royal visits.
"I'm glad that I'm not starting now because at least you had people to talk to. Now you don't really. Phones are bad enough, but the iPads-you can’t even see their heads," she said during an interview at Buckingham Palace.
"No idea who you’re talking to. I either don’t bother or just say, 'Look, if you want to ask me something, I suggest you put that down.' It is weird. People don’t believe they’ve experienced the event unless they’ve taken a photograph."
Watch the full clip of Princess Anne's interview below. If you're in the United Kingdom, Queen of the World will air on ITV on September 25 at 9:15 p.m. It will premiere in the States October 1 at 8 p.m. on HBO and HBO Go.
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