The number of engagements for all the members of the royal family are collated by a member of the public. He uses the Court Circular, but in his calculations he divides up the types of engagements (dinners, meetings, investitures) and also separates the overseas engagements to the local ones. It's the press who do the adding up!
Tim O'Donovan publishes his lists in a letter to the editor each year to the Times newspaper. Read this and get a far better view of what type of engagements and what is counted. Trips to the Derby and family birthday events are not, neither are getting on a plane which is also listed in the Court Circular when members of the royal family travel for official reasons.
Tim O Donovan's list is very impressive indeed. I hope that Zonk won't delete this, but will move it to another thread if it is deemed too OT here because I think it is an important point to make, but over the years people have pointed out the downside of Tim O Donovan's list is that it is based purely on numbers of types of particular enagements, rather than the 'time' and 'quality' of each engagement. Thus, if William and Catherine spend a
whole afternoon at an event, this will be counted only as 'one engagement', whereas another royal could have fitted in several engagements in a similar time frame, yet have them counted separately.
From my own experience, I can remember having the privilege of being at an Engagement held at a special school, with Princess Alexandra and her husband the then Hon Angus Ogilvy. [the latter, in my humble opinion, one of the unsung heros of the BRF spouses for all the support he gave his royal wife]. The engagement lasted for quite some time, with Princess Alexandra meeting absolutely everyone, including parents and carers of these special-needs children, and staff - right down to the oft-forgotten dinner ladies. This was counted in the Court Circular as 'one engagement', yet it lasted a long time and most probably required several hours of 'preparatory study' by the Princess and for that matter her husband! During the same time frame, Princess Anne [who I am certainly NOT meaning to criticise by this] could have fitted in a reception, an unveiling [recorded in the Court Circular from which Mr O'D tales his figures as
2 separate engagements] before heading off to another nearby place and doing another unveiling and attending another reception [
2 more separate engagements]. In this context, I would invite members of TRF to look at a 'typical' day of engagements (as recorded in the Court Circular) for the Princess Royal, and more likely than not, you will see 4, 5 or even 6 engagements listed in a working afternoon!
And I daresay it can be exactly the same with Wiliam and Catherine. To take the royal couple's attendance at The Sun's Military Awards as an example, this took at least a couple of hours and I suspect that the royal couple - much like the Queen before an Investiture - spent some time going through the list of names of the people they would be meeting and familiarising themselves with details about what they had done and why they were being honoured etc, all of which would have taken some time, but only represented by
1 'tick' in Mr O' Donovan's 'box'. [And don't get me started on the late Princess Margaret - whilst some royal engagements tend to overrun - for example, the Duchess of Kent [when she was a full-time working royal] and the late Princess Diana both had the reputation of 'staying as long as was needed' which often led to some engagements overruning, Princess Margaret was famous for rushing through her engagements and 'getting away' well before the scheduled end of the engagement - on one occasion she famously visited a school and stayed 20 minutes instead of the scheduled 60 minutes, leaving an art exhibition un-visited, a school play rehearsal unseen and a choir practice unheard, yet still got the
1 engagement credit in Mr O'D's list.
Incidentally, because of just this sort of difficulty, each year Mr O'D is at pains to state that his work should not be regarded as a 'league table' of hard-working royals.
Hope this helps to place the work of William and Catherine in context.
Alex