Text by Lorna Reeves • Photograph by Steve Rizzo
A biographer’s unexpected story of friendship and charity
For Andrew Morton, his most memorable and enjoyable teatimes took place at the stately National Trust homes of England’s West Country that he would often visit on weekends while working as a trainee journalist in Plymouth. Strolls around the beautiful grounds of the regal estates would culminate in what he calls “splendid and sumptuous” afternoon teas, often featuring scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, which he confesses, are his favorite treat. “Because the clotted cream was local, it would still be quite nutty and very chewy,” he says. “I can almost taste it now.” Dubbed “the king of royal tea” by The New York Times, Andrew chuckles when asked how he feels about that moniker. “It’s nice to be called the king of something,” he says, adding that he does “drink tea religiously” and that it’s always English Breakfast but admitting that the type of tea referenced in that title really has nothing to do with the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant and everything to do with, as Urban Dictionary puts it, “the best kind of gossip.”
Having written more than 20 books about various members of Britain’s royal family, international celebrities, and heads of state, Andrew Morton is perhaps best known for Diana: Her True Story (1992). “It was a disguised autobiography,” he reveals, going on to explain how the princess recorded answers to questions he funneled to her through a mutual friend for what turned out to be “an amazingly secretive and extraordinary collaboration.” He says it was through those recordings that he got the sense of what Diana felt and what was going on in her head and in her heart. His newest work, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), tells the moving story of the United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch and her sole sibling. “When I started looking at Elizabeth and Margaret, I realized that their relationship as women was utterly unique in broad terms. They were very, very similar but very, very different,” Andrew observes. “They maintained an almost intuitive relationship.”
“Afternoon tea is quite the ritual for the queen. … it’s a very important meal of the day for her.”—ANDREW MORTON
