For 63 years, Carolyn Robb simmered in silence, her lips sealed tighter than a coronation crown. As the youngest chef ever appointed to the Royal Family – a 20-something prodigy who ruled the kitchens at Kensington Palace and Clarence House from 1989 to 2000 – she dished up decadence for Princes William and Harry, simmered stews for a lovesick Diana, and plated perfection for Camilla Parker Bowles during her ascent from “other woman” to queen consort. Loyalty was her creed; discretion, her crown. But now, with a memoir dropping like a grenade into the House of Windsor’s teacup, Robb is shattering that vow. The Royal Touch: A Chef’s Life in the Shadows of the Crown, out December 3, 2025, isn’t just recipes for nettle soup or royal Christmas pud – it’s a no-holds-barred peel-back of the palace’s human underbelly. And the star? Camilla, the “Rottweiler” turned regal icon, whose private side Robb paints in strokes of fury, fragility, and surprising fondness for fish fingers. At an age when most retirees garden or golf, Robb’s ready to shock the monarchy – and the world – with truths no courtiers dared whisper.

It started with a whisper in 2023, when Robb, now a grandmother with silver-streaked hair and a laugh like clinking crystal, teased a “tell-some” book at a Charleston Lit Fest panel. “I’ve carried these stories for decades,” she said then, eyes twinkling over a gin fizz. “Like a good sauce, they’ve reduced – but they’re potent.” Publishers clamored; Netflix hovered with adaptation murmurs. By summer 2025, the deal was inked: HarperCollins, with a foreword by her old mate Darina Allen. No ghostwriter – Robb’s prose is crisp as her puff pastry, laced with dry wit and zero groveling. “I signed an NDA thicker than my suet crust,” she confessed in a rare pre-launch sit-down with The Times. “But time’s the great unbinder. And Camilla? She’d want me to set the record straight – warts, whims, and all.”

The jaw-dropper hits early: a chapter titled “The Toast That Nearly Toppled the Throne,” chronicling a 1996 Clarence House supper where Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall-in-waiting, unleashed a tirade that echoed down the corridors. Charles, fresh from a polo match, had slathered his crumpet with marmalade – the wrong one. “Darling, it’s the Seville, not the ginger!” Camilla snapped, according to Robb’s vivid recount. What followed? A 20-minute marital meltdown, forks clattering as she railed about “small slights building to seismic shifts.” Robb, hidden in the butler’s pantry, caught every barb: Camilla venting about Diana’s ghost (“That woman’s perfume still lingers in the linen presses”), the tabloid hounds (“They call me the Rottweiler? I’d bite back if I could”), and her own insecurities (“I’m no fairy-tale princess – I’m the plot twist”). Charles, Robb writes, “sat like a scolded schoolboy, butter knife limp,” before diffusing with a whispered “My love, it’s the thought – and the jam.” By dessert (her signature lemon posset), they were giggling over inside jokes, hands entwined. “It was raw, real – the kind of row that reminds you they’re flesh and blood,” Robb reflects. “Not the stiff-upper-lip myth we sell.”

But it’s the “unexpected moments of humanity” that humanize Camilla most, shattering her steely tabloid veneer. Robb spills on the queen’s secret vice: midnight raids on the walk-in larder for “naughty nibbles” – fish fingers dunked in HP sauce, or pilfered Penguins biscuits when insomnia struck. “She’d pad in at 2 a.m., silk dressing gown askew, whispering ‘Don’t tell Andrew,’” Robb recounts of the royal butler. One night, post a bruising Vanity Fair hit-piece branding her “the marriage wrecker,” Camilla commandeered the kitchen for a solo pity party: Robb whipped up a “consolation curry,” mild as her mood, while Camilla poured out her soul over chai. “I never wanted the crown,” she allegedly admitted, tears salting the vindaloo. “Just Charlie – and a life without spotlights.” Robb, then 35 and newly divorced herself, bonded over breakups: “We swapped war stories till dawn, her laughing at my failed soufflés, me marveling at her grit.” It’s these vignettes – Camilla finger-painting with young Harry, or belting out show tunes with Diana over high tea – that paint her not as villain, but vulnerable victor.

Nothing’s off-limits, and that’s the thrill – and terror. Robb doesn’t spare the scandals: whispers of Charles’s valet smuggling love letters during Diana’s era, or Camilla’s “emergency exit” from a Balmoral hunt when courtiers gossiped too close. She dishes on the food fights, too – Diana’s carb-phobic whims  clashing with Camilla’s hearty hunter’s suppers. And the arguments? A doozy from 1998, when Camilla, incensed by leaked tapes of her phone trysts with Charles, hurled a silver salver at a mirror, shattering it like her patience. “Years of silence, and one crack undoes it,” Robb quotes her seething. Yet, redemption arcs abound: post-Diana’s 1997 death, Camilla’s quiet casseroles for a grieving Charles, or her glee at Harry’s first loose tooth.

At 63, Robb’s timing feels fateful. With King Charles III’s health whispers and William’s ascension looming, her book lands like a palate cleanser amid the Firm’s PR polish. No longer the wide-eyed whippersnapper who started at Kensington under footman James Hewitt’s watchful eye, she’s a Surrey-based food writer, her “Robb’s Table” supper club a hit with ex-royals like Sophie Wessex. “I stayed quiet for loyalty,” she told Vanity Fair. “Now? For legacy. Camilla’s no saint – but she’s no sinner either. Just a woman who loves fiercely, fights dirtier, and eats like the rest of us.” Early reviews rave: The Guardian calls it “a feast of forbidden fruit”; The Telegraph, “discreetly devastating.” Advance copies leaked to palace insiders? Crickets – but expect a stiff statement from Clarence House: “Her Majesty appreciates loyal service, past and present.”

The world’s agog. Will Camilla sue? Rally round? For Robb, it’s cathartic: “Decades of ‘Yes, ma’am’ – now, my turn to serve the truth.” As The Royal Touch climbs pre-order charts, one chapter’s excerpt – Camilla toasting Robb’s 30th birthday with “To the keeper of our chaos” – hints at enduring affection. In a monarchy of masks, Robb’s revelations strip it bare: glittering walls hide greasy spoons, whispered rows, and women who whisper back. Jaw-dropping? Utterly. But in spilling the royal tea, Carolyn Robb doesn’t scald – she steeps us in something richer: the messy, marvelous humanity of queens next door.