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^{Traditional: Guy Goodfellow royal nursery design for the Redbook Agency}

"We also found lovely historic photographs of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in their nursery in Pall Mall, as little girls on their giant rocking horse. You can tell from other pictures that it was quite spartan. You can see exactly where the Royal children's training in formality began. The only high jinks was provided by the piano and the rocking horse. It was tough stuff."

He said the nursery provided by Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight was quite chintzy. "But it was the sort of thing you would do today with a tight budget and not much imagination. The nursery couldn't have been more remote from the formal rooms. Again there was the rocking horse but no evidence of toys or creativity."

^{Chintzy: the nursery for Queen Victoria's children at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight}

The RedBook brief was to make the designs as realistic as possible, so the real dimensions and fenestration of Kensington Palace provided the structure. Then they were asked to have some fun with it. Christopher Prain of Christopher Chanond interior designers designed a room with global reach and many Royal references.

"It was inspired by Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days," he says. "The silk rug on the floor is an 18th-century map of the globe." There is a steel castle like the rook from a chessboard, a slice of Royal Oak made into a table, a rocking horse which is in fact a unicorn like the one on the Royal coat of arms. The walls are decorated with elephants and giraffes.

The second designer, Guy Goodfellow , whose clients include the Duchess of Marlborough, the Earl and Countess of Hopetown and Lord and Lady Dashwood, has lined his version with a historic wallpaper designed in the 1850s by Alexander Beauchamp showing scenes of Hyde Park. "There are also teddy bears because, as we all know, Prince Charles sleeps with a teddy bear in his bed," says Sandy.

At Prince Charles's own birth, historic precedent was broken and the tradition which required the Home Secretary to attend the lying-in (often with other courtiers) was abandoned. Ben Pimlott records in The Queen, A Biography of Elizabeth II that "the baby prince was placed in a gilt crib, with lace frills around it, and the entire Palace staff was invited to visit the nursery to take a peek." He goes on: "A royal pram was brought out of storage, along with a royal rattle once used by the Princess."

^{The Prince of Wales in his frill-laden crib, watched over by the Queen}

PRAMS

1. Since 1877 Silver Cross has been making the Royal prams. It supplied a baby carriage to George VI for the Queen as a baby and one to Grace Kelly. The new Silver Cross Surf costs £2,000 and has been designed with the help of Aston Martin with air-sprung suspension. It is described as "the world's most exclusive contemporary baby travel system".

MOSES BASKETS

1. Dragons of Walton Street luxury Moses basket at £2,995 with waterfalls of French Chantilly lace and French silk crepe, which takes eight weeks to hand-stitch.

2. Willow crib made from renewable willow, traditionally woven, larger than a Moses basket, on pine and leather stand, at £215 from Naturalmat in Notting Hill.

ROCKING HORSES

1.The Rocking Horse Shop in York makes spectacular hand-carved bespoke horses, ready-to-ride, restores old ones and also runs carve-a-head courses. Horses cost between £1,000 and £4,000.

2. Tom Cobley & All in Grantham has been making rocking horses for 34 years and during the recession their work restoring antique rocking horses has taken off. Prices are between £1,000 and £2,000..

3. Stevenson Brothers (main rocking horse pictured in the Guy Goodfollow nursery design). New, bespoke and antique rocking horses from £400 to over £5,000.

DOLLS' HOUSES

1. The Dolls House Emporium has the very posh Grosvenor Hall, which is four feet high (not including the basement) from £569. It now has a licence to reproduce the Queen's Dolls' House, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and made in 1924. It is on display in Windsor Castle on a 1:12 scale, and includes a strong room for the Crown Jewels.

BABY QUILTS

1. There might be a Welsh touch. Welsh blankets in undyed cream, woven in Ceredigion by Roger Poulson, sell at £129 from Welsh Blankets. Jane Beck salvages antique quilts decorated with daisies, leaves and spirals, selling at £39.

2. Dragons of Walton Street cot quilt with Peter Rabbit motif at £235.