Why everyone’s talking about Angela Kelly

The Queen’s personal dresser and confidante Angela Kelly has been granted permission to publish a book about the monarch, in a royal first.

The Queen’s right-hand woman has already written the tell-all memoir, which is titled The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe and will be released on 29 October.

Along with “charming anecdotes”, the book will reveal what it takes to form a “true and lasting connection” with the Queen, reports The Times.

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But why is Kelly so special to Her Majesty?

Who is Angela Kelly?

Kelly was born in Liverpool in 1957 “into a fiercely patriotic Roman Catholic family with strong seafaring roots and a tough work ethic”, according to the Daily Mail.

Her father was a Liverpool docker and her mother was a nurse. “I come from a humble background and I hope to stay humble,” Kelly said in a one-off interview in 2007. “But I hope the Queen and I grow old together.”

Kelly first met the monarch in 1992, while working in Berlin as a housekeeper for the British ambassador to Germany, Sir Christopher Mallaby. During an official visit by the Queen and Prince Philip to the ambassador’s home, Kelly mentioned that she was returning to Britain the following year. Months later, she was offered a position as one of the Queen’s dressers.

“I suppose the Queen must have liked me and decided I was trustworthy and discreet,” Kelly told The Telegraph.

She was promoted through the ranks to her current position, Personal Advisor to Her Majesty (The Queen’s Wardrobe), the head curator and designer of the Queen’s clothing.

She has also become a close friend of Elizabeth II, and they share a “uniquely close connection”, says the newspaper.

“They get on like a house on fire and when they walk along the Palace corridors you can hear them laughing and joking together,” a senior member of staff told the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey.

Why is she a controversial figure?

In 1999, Kelly was reported to have had a vicious fight with maid Hannah Coullett – 20 years her junior - after becoming convinced that she was having an affair with her boyfriend Tony Ferriroli, a royal pastry chef, who was married to someone else.

A Palace insider told the New York Post: “The next thing, they were grabbing hold of each other and fighting. Police had to pull them apart. It was a real cat fight.”

In 2003, Kelly made the news again when she lost her temper after being kept waiting for her lunch and hurled a bag of rubbish at an employee in the Palace catering department.

Five years later, she was detained by police after “losing the plot” when she was stopped while trying to enter the Palace without her security pass, says the Daily Express. She reportedly shouted “Don’t you know who I am?” at police, who pinned her to the ground as she went “berserk”.

And there was another controversy the following year when her design partner Alison Pordum quit amid allegations that she was tired of playing “second fiddle” to “self-important” Kelly.

Acknowledging the various allegations against her, Kelly told the Telegraph in 2007: “I don’t have any more room for knives in my back. Some people have made up all sorts of stories.”

Why is her book so groundbreaking?

Servants are usually banned from talking publicly about their time with the Royal Family, and have to sign the Official Secrets Act.

But the Queen has personally granted Kelly permission to publish her experiences of working for the longest-serving monarch in British history.

The book’s blurb states: “The Queen has personally given Angela her blessing to share their unparalleled bond with the world.”

Unlike Kelly’s last book, Dressing the Queen - “just a book about dresses” according to a Palace spokesperson - the new read will be “much more intimate in its approach”, according to the Telegraph’s Tominey.

Publisher HarperCollins says the memoir will “provide memorable insights into what it is like to work closely with the Queen, to curate her wardrobe and to discover a true and lasting connection along the way”.

The book will also contain photographs of the Queen from Kelly’s private collection.