London correspondent

Surrounded by the greatest secrecy fortune of the royal family has always been the subject of fantasies. And misunderstandings, too, since there is often confusion between the Royals’ personal assets and those belonging to their office. To clarify matters, the Sunday Times has carried out a lengthy investigation, cataloguing every acre of land in the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and peeling back the commercial agreements used to finance members of the Firm, the nickname coined by George VI. Some of these revenues, derived from British public institutions, are embarrassing for the image of the Crown.

Transparency about the Royal Family’s assets has always been very relative. Even the sacrosanct British Parliament has been denied access to the list of properties held by its members. The joint investigation by Sunday Times and the program Dispatches Channel 4’s Dispatches reveals many details about the properties held by…