I very much enjoyed the recent TV series on Sandringham – but presenter Nigel Havers only scraped the surface in recounting the extraordinary events that took place at the royal family’s Norfolk estate.

Did you know that in real life, Prince John whose tragic life story it alluded to, suffering from epilepsy as a child and living at Wood Farm with his Nanny, used to sweep the station platform at Wolferton and played with the station master’s grandson, Leslie? He was paid for it too, and had the best time ever watching the trains steam in and out and being a normal little boy. Nigel Havers stood on the platform where the young prince played and swept away the leaves, it would have been an evocative reference for him to make – if only the production team had read my books first!

Sadly, the prince, the youngest child of King George V and Queen Mary, died aged 13 on 18 January 1919 and was buried at St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham three days later, with staff paying their respects by lining the path on his final journey to church.

His resting place is next to that of another Prince John, who was born prematurely to his grandmother, Queen Alexandra on 6 April 1871 and died twenty four hours later. The Dowager Queen commented poignantly that the ‘two little Johnnies lie side by side’.

I don’t believe the TV series mentioned the Sandringham Company, made up of the the Kings Men who worked on the royal Sandringham estate, and the devastating Gallipoli Campaign which rocked this tight knit community and forms a thread throughout my trilogy.

You can read more about Prince John and the fun he had at Wolferton station in the final book of my trilogy, The Royal Station Master’s Daughters in Love

It is available in some bookstores and online here: https://rb.gy/x48grl