London - Right now the builders are finishing off, perhaps the largest, interior design commission from the Duchy of Cornwall.
The pub-cum-hotel has risen majestically in the centre of Poundbury, Prince Charles’s model village on the outskirts of Dorchester, and will be named The Duchess Of Cornwall — after Annabel’s elder sister — when it opens in October.
Inevitably there is renewed gossip about Mrs Elliot receiving more sustenance from her sister’s royal table — annual accounts of the Duchy reveal it has paid Annabel £1.5 million for goods and design services since Camilla, 69, married the Prince in 2005.
Friends have noticed that the building, which Charles refers to as Poundbury’s new ‘pub’, bears a striking resemblance to Mayfair’s imposing Ritz Hotel, a place to which the Prince has a great sentimental attachment.
Annabel herself, of course, has been the most constant element of all in Charles and Camilla’s romance (she and businessman husband Simon Elliot even accompanied the couple on their honeymoon to Balmoral).
Mrs Elliot always tries to mirror the taste of her clients. This is why there’s a duck-egg blue scheme in the Welsh hideaway — it is one of Camilla’s favourite colours.
At 67, Annabel is not letting up. In The Duchess Of Cornwall pub she has a big project, especially for someone who runs her business, Annabel Elliot Ltd, from her country house in the Dorset village of Stourpaine, where she and Simon have lived for years.
This house, too, has played its part in the ultimate happy ending of the Prince and his duchess. For through those awkward years when Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles were secret lovers, it was their favourite meeting place for discreet weekends.
Prince Charles has always been grateful for the help and comfort he and Camilla received from Annabel, and from Simon. He is not without his critics, but he is a man of great loyalty towards people who have shown him kindness.
But is it right over so many years for Annabel Elliot to be routinely commissioned by the Duchy?
The organisation has not put the interior design work out for tender. It says the Prince is ‘very happy with Mrs Elliot’s work’, adding that work doesn’t have to be put out for tender because the Duchy is a private estate.
When William becomes Prince of Wales, he will benefit from the estate’s vast income, which provided his father with £20 million last year.
As young women, Annabel was the prettier one while Camilla was ‘sexier’, and men inevitably found her the more attractive.
Camilla loved the party round on the debutante circuit. Annabel was rather more serious and preferred a quieter life — ‘not the kind of girl to throw her knickers on the table’.
One friend asserts that Annabel, ‘with her style and good taste, is the one who should have been a duchess’. She adds: ‘She’d have been perfect, but would never want to change places. As for Camilla, she pulls it off, in her own way.’
Despite these differences, the sisters have clung to and confided in each other.
The sisters, meanwhile, speak daily by phone and Camilla often includes Annabel and Simon in royal occasions.
Daily Mail