Smash hit

“The nation longs for a fairy-tale renewal of the royal narrative. There is a huge appetite for romance and that is the foundation stone of monarchy. I think Middleton carries the unconscious burden of that national expectation.”

WHAT is Middleton’s narrative? What do we know of her beyond the “fact” that he calls her Babykins and her nickname for him is Big Willy? According to Wilson, her genes make for the “most fascinating mix” — which is a polite genealogical way of saying that her antecedents are humble. She is not handicapped by inbred aristocratic blood or by a childhood blighted by parental divorce. “Her intermingled bloodline will bring more than anyone else who has ever married into the royal family,” he said.

James Harrison, Middleton’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, was a coal miner in Co Durham. Born in 1794, he lived in a miner’s cottage in Low Moorsley. Several generations of the family worked in the mines until Dorothy, Kate’s grandmother, moved from the northeast to Ealing in west London with her father, a carpenter, and her mother.

Dorothy married Ron Goldsmith, a young engineer, and the couple had Carole, Middleton’s mother, in 1955. After school, Carole trained as an air stewardess. She met a trainee pilot, Michael Middleton, and they married in Chiltern, Buckinghamshire, in 1980. Two years later, on January 9, 1982, Carole gave birth to Catherine Elizabeth, five months before William was born. Her sister Philippa and brother James followed.

The Middletons started Party Pieces in 1987 and have been hugely successful thanks to the internet. For the past 10 years the family have lived at Oak Acre, a modern five-bedroom detached house in the village of Bucklebury, near Newbury in Berkshire, running the business from nearby barns and a converted cowshed.

In other words, they are the epitome of modern Middle England — entrepreneurial, hard-working and thoroughly grounded. Not all their forebears were lowly. Harriet Martineau, the 19th-century writer and political reformer, was an ancestor and there are connections with the Chamberlain family, which provided Britain with a prime minister and a chancellor of the exchequer.

As a girl, Kate did not thrive at St Andrew’s school in Pangbourne, a mixed prep, nor at Downe House girls’ school in Berkshire, where she was bullied. Her parents sent her at 14 to board at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where she excelled at sport, playing hockey for the school, captaining the tennis team and beating the boys at high jump.

Although never particularly distinguished academically, she gained three A- levels. Persistent attempts by tabloid reporters have failed to dig up anything more scandalous than her habit of mooning at the male boarders from the window of her dorm. According to Jessica Hay, a schoolfriend, she underwent an overnight transformation in the sixth form. “She grew boobs and wore low-cut tops,” Hay told a reporter. “Everyone was after her, including the hottest guy in the school.”

Before Middleton went to St Andrews, she was reported to have had a picture of William pinned to her wall. The Spectator reported last year that her mother had urged her to go to the Fife university because of the William factor. A neat story, but unlikely.

At St Andrews she and William were on the same history of art course and she was credited with persuading him to switch to geography rather than drop out. The couple lived a few doors apart at St Salvator’s hall of residence, playing tennis regularly. In 2002 they moved into a house in the town with two friends. It later emerged that they had spent weekends at Highgrove and on the Balmoral estate.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have apparently formed an affectionate bond with Middleton after meeting her at the graduation ceremony in 2005, when William received a respectable upper second in geography and she the same class of degree in history of art.

A well informed friend in the Queen’s circle said last week: “The Queen really likes Kate and sees in her the potential for an excellent consort when her grandson accedes the throne. Her view is, ‘Once this royal couple are properly established on the royal stage I can at last take it a bit easier’. She has always been afraid of handing over the reins to an heir who she fears has not fully grasped his constitutional position. Both the Queen and her mother married young, so she sees nothing wrong or askew in an early match. She does, however, accept that if they do marry, the future of the monarchy will be in this couple’s hands.”

Another royal insider has said that the Queen sees in Middleton a young woman who “has no interest in being royal, but who loves William for himself. She thinks that one of the reasons why Charles’s marriage to Diana didn’t last was because he waited too long and, at 32, he was too set in his ways. She is very positive about the match. She sees in them two young people who are capable of capturing the affection of the people”.

We shall see. There remains one impediment to any announcement. Next year may prove too crowded with jubilation. In November the Queen will celebrate her diamond wedding and 2007 will be devoted to that anniversary.

We may, perhaps, depend on one thing. Were the couple to announce their engagement and were they to be asked whether they were in love, we can safely predict that William will never say, as his father did, “Whatever ‘love’ is.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be