Privy Purse Office - Buckingham Palace - signing guest book???
 

I am reading a VERYold book called The Queen and Her Court - it describes in detail the different royal residences and mentions that at Buckingham Palace you can ask to sign the guest book and will be escorted to the Privy Purse Office at a side door - I can't imagine this still being a practice BUT I am visiting in March and would hate to miss this..

has anyone heard of this or done it???

Nope to both. Sounds like the kind of thing to keep some underpaid clerks busy and a sinecure title for some aristocratic nonentity, of the kind that's been whittled away for quite a few decades now.

I may be wrong, of course. But I don't recall seeing it mentioned in the last couple of TV documentaries showing the "behind the scenes" work in the Palace.

Aha. A bit of googling turns up this story from a visiting student who got introduced to someone who works at the Palace and offered to show him round his office:

<i>Keith introduced me to the doorman and asked if I could sign the guest book of Buckingham Palace. "No," he responded quickly, "there are strict rules for signing the guest book." He said that it requires the starting of a new page, which he would have to title with the name of the event for the signing. Apparently my visit wasn't quite a big enough event for its own page in the guest.

Then, to my amazement, lady luck struck once more. The doorman made it very clear how lucky I was, as he decided that he would bend the rules and allow me to sign my information under a list of names from a past event. </I>
http://www.centre.edu/web/news/2006/horne_buck06.html

So unless you fancy hanging around pubs on the off-chance of meeting someone with privileged access to the Palace, I wouldn't waste your time.

This reminds me of something funny. We visited Buckingham Palace last summer. While we were waiting to go in, an American tourist came up to one of the guards to ask what time the Mall opened.
The guard was puzzled; "uhm.. it's a street, it's always open".
Yes, the tourist replied, but what time do the shops in the Mall open....

"Yes, the tourist replied, but what time do the shops in the Mall open...

And what happened when the news was broken that there are no shops in the Mall?

The guard honestly did not understand the question - the tourist just left. Should have pointed him towards Westfield.

Again, I did assume this was a long past tradition but wanted to be sure.
I DID know the Mall was a street :)