The interiors of Buckingham Palace

My fascination with Buckingham Palace began as a child. In our nursery there was a model of the Palace’s East Front, the grey stone façade onto the Mall, added to the existing building by Sir Aston Webb in just over 3 months in 1913, and fitted around its windows without breaking a single pane of glass. What the palace model was doing in our nursery I don’t know; I imagine our father thought it made a picturesque toy for us.

As children my sisters and I went to the Palace every June to watch our grandfather, as Colonel of the Life Guards and Gold Stick-in-Waiting, ride back along the Mall with the Queen after her birthday parade. We would see the extraordinary Chinese rooms hidden behind the grey stone façade, my father explaining to me that it all came from the Prince Regent’s seaside fantasy palace, the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. I was fascinated by the ivory pagodas and ships, the gold dragons and jewelled trees.

Offered the chance to return to the Palace and make a new book of its splendid interiors, I jumped at it, feeling like I was returning to a magical treasure cave from a childhood dream. I was determined to bring out the beauty and glamour of the rooms in my photographs, which often get lost now with artificially-lit, wide shots. I insisted on turning off every lamp and using only daylight, with its wonderfully moody shadows, and cropped the views to give a more intimate, tactile feeling.

The extraordinary treasures displayed in the rooms – gilt-bronze candelabra and clocks, porcelain, Japanese lacquer – all these I have tried to make heroic with almost life-size detail shots. To these I have added images of the slightly frayed grandeur of worn silk damask upholstery on gilt chairs that are sat on every day, unlike the pristinely restored, unused pieces you see in French palace museums. For Buckingham Palace is certainly no museum, but a working palace, in constant use by HM The Queen and the Royal Family.

The State Apartments are open to the public every summer, but the Chinese rooms are not, and neither is the Royal Closet, a small room (by palace standards) in which the Royal Family assemble before state occasions. From this hidden chamber they emerge as if by magic through a very elaborate jib door on which are mounted not only a vast mirror in a carved and gilded frame but also a heavy cabinet mounted with pietra dura panels by Martin Carlin in Paris in 1780. On this stands a wartime Christmas present for Queen Mary in 1943: a pair of candelabra by Pierre Gouthière.

The book has a short history of the building of the Palace and of its decoration and contents, but really it is a picture book, a patchwork of images attempting to capture its unique atmosphere. My only regret is that my father is no longer around to see it; he would have enjoyed looking at it almost as much as I enjoyed making it.

'Buckingham Palace: The Interiors', by Ashley Hicks, £40, Rizzoli