TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER 2019 137
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t was a procession of awkwardly matched dignitaries. They
walked two by two, in their tiaras and white ties, into the
state dining room at Buckingham Palace, where the 1990
Château Lafite Rothschild would perhaps flow more freely
than the small talk. President Trump and the queen, Princess
Anne and Jared Kushner, the Duke of Cambridge and The-
resa May, the departing prime minister. Then, down the line
came a particularly intriguing pairing. Sarah Vine, a columnist at the
Daily Mail who had been invited because she is the wife of Michael
Gove, a minister in May’s cabinet, joined Rose Cholmondeley, a for-
mer model whose grandmother had been bridesmaid to the queen.
Cholmondeley, who is 35, was there because her husband David,
the Marquess of Cholmondeley (pronounced “Chumley”), has
a ceremonial role as Lord Great Chamberlain. But weeks ear-
lier Vine’s newspaper had breathlessly reported rumors about
Rose, the Marchioness at Houghton Hall, the absurdly grand
Cholmondeley seat in Norfolk, a county in the east of England.
In that strange rural enclave of castles and the royal-adjacent
characters who inhabit them—now gleefully dubbed “Turnip
Toffs” by the press—there was talk of a dramatic falling out
between Rose and her neighbor and friend Kate, the Duchess of
Cambridge. Headlines suddenly proclaimed Rose to be Kate’s “rural
rival.” Despite the three miles that separate Houghton and Anmer
Hall, Prince William’s home on the royal Sandringham estate, had a
boundary been crossed? Kensington Palace slapped back againstPALACE INTRIGUE
The Duchess and
Duke of Cambridge
have been spending
ample time at Anmer
Hall, their house in
Norfolk on the queen’s
Sandringham estate.