Royal Dining Etiquette Brief

It is not etiquette to eat while the King is not doing so. Due to the King’s shorter dinners in 1913, a third of the wine was not drunk that used to be drunk at fashionable British tables.

King’s Dinner Guests Drinking Less Wine Now

Ruler, an Indigestion Sufferer, Causes Banquets to be Much Shorter

Dinners grow shorter each season. King Edward VII was the first to set the cult of the brief dinner and King George V, who, in spite of the greatest care, is still dyspeptic, cuts them shorter still, as he does not taste half the courses and consequently it is not etiquette to eat while the King is not doing so. A third of the wine is not drunk that used to be drunk at fashionable tables.– London, 23 February, 1913

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