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When Meghan joined the Royal Family, she was taught things like how to get out of a car in a pencil skirt, given advice on how to behave and put in touch with experts for further instructions. However, in the book Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, it was also claimed the Duchess of Sussex was never given etiquette lessons. The authors wrote: “Set to undergo the same information training Kate had embarked upon following her engagement to William ‒ a series of instructions that covered everything from how to most gracefully exit your chauffeured sedan while wearing a pencil skirt to when to courtesy to members of the family several rungs up the hierarchy from you ‒ Meghan was connected to a team of experts.”

They added: “She had hoped to take etiquette lessons too, but curiously there were never on offer.”

Royal expert Ann Gripper argued: “That is etiquette lessons!”

Pod Save the Queen is a podcast hosted by Ms Gripper and features Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers.

When the pair discussed the new book Finding Freedom, Ms Gripper brought up an interview she had done several weeks earlier with Rupert Wessen, who works for Debrett’s, an organisation dubbed “the arbiters of society and etiquette”.

From this interview, she understood a lot more about royal etiquette and the etiquette of high society, so when she read Finding Freedom, she was stunned by the claim made about Meghan’s training ‒ or supposed lack thereof.

Ms Gripper said: “One bit that I thought was a little bit interesting ‒ maybe to the mindset of expectation versus reality, and it’s a tiny, tiny thing and I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if I hadn’t had a chat with Rupert from Debrett’s.

“When they’re talking about how she was given access to experts and taught how to sit down properly in a pencil skirt and that kind of thing, but was never offered etiquette lessons…

“It’s just like, all these things that you are being told… that is etiquette lessons!

“Putting you in touch with experts, that is making that information available.

“And certainly, speaking to Rupert, most of what the message I got from it was ‘be nice to people’ and ‘treat people as you would want to be treated’.

“And it’s actually not as complicated as you need to make it, so I thought that was interesting.”

In this way, Ms Gripper argued Meghan may have been confused that she never received etiquette lessons, but in fact she did, she just didn’t necessarily realise it at the time.

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The general public often assumes that royals are taught exactly how to act in a very formal way, but that is usually not the case.

For example, Princess Anne has previously revealed on several occasions that she was never taught how to do a walkabout or a royal engagement, she simply had to learn on the job.

For example, in an interview with Terry Wogan in 1985, the host asked Anne who advised her on how to cope with royal engagements, what to do and say, or whether she simply learned from experience.

Anne replied: “You learn the hard way, mostly. Through experience.”

This shows that, even for the daughter of the Queen, formalised instructions and lessons on how to conduct herself on engagements was not really on offer.

Instead, ad hoc advice, as well as simply learning from experience is more the done thing in the Royal Family.

In this way, Meghan was not an outlier in not receiving formal etiquette classes, but the norm.

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