Prince William and his wife Catherine have chosen an apartment in Kensington Palace as their London residence, royal officials said yesterday.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, whose April wedding was watched around the globe, are to move into Apartment 1A — the former home of the late Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister, in middle to late-2013, their St James’ Palace office said.
REPAIRS
They will not be able to make the move for two years as structural repairs must first be completed.
At the moment their London base, Nottingham Cottage, is already in the palace grounds, but the move will take them into the grander surroundings of Kensington Palace itself.
The move is a return for William, 29, to his childhood home — Apartment 8 of the palace was the main residence Diana, Princess of Wales, and William and his brother Prince Harry, 27, lived there until 1998.
Mourners left a sea of flowers and tributes at the gates of the 17th-century palace after the death of Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997.
William and Catherine, also 29, are mainly based on the island of Anglesey in northwest Wales at the moment, where the prince is a Royal Air Force search and rescue helicopter pilot.
Harry will take over Nottingham Cottage when his brother and sister-in-law move into the palace proper.
The trio’s offices will also move with them from their current location at St James’ Palace.
The queen and William’s father Prince Charles have approved the moves.
Anyone fancying a peek at William and Catherine’s apartment has the chance to see a section of it, which is being used for a public exhibition until September next year.
The rest of the apartment is currently used as offices, classrooms and for storage by Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and several other buildings.
“The extent of the work needed to turn the apartment back into a home is not yet known,” St James’ Palace said in a statement, which added it was currently uninhabitable.
Work was needed to remove asbestos as well as on the heating systems and electrics, it said.
FAMILY QUARTERS
It was last lived in by Margaret, who died in 2002. The last major renovation took place before she and her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon, moved in in 1960 after their marriage.
William and Catherine will have plenty of royal company nearby, as three of the queen’s cousins, all grandsons of King George V, live at the palace.
Additional reporting by staff writerwriter
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS