How different history might have been if only the PR people employed by Charles Edward Stuart had spread the word. Unquestionably, that parvenu princeling George II, being more than usually full of his own importance and anxious to curry favour with the chattering classes, did not shop at M&S, let alone stay there. Mein Gott! Nein!

There was still a lot of suspicion about the Hanoverians. Did they fit into English society? Choosing a suitable store was surely part of that cultural acclimatisation process? Though evidence is strangely lacking, I am convinced that George and Caroline (were they known as Georgie and Cazza?) frequented Harrods - though there can be no doubt at all Frederick, Prince of Wales was a Marks and Spencer’s man, just to be perverse and annoy his parents in that amusing Hanoverian way. So George’s penchant for elitist stores would have been a godsend to BPC’s people if only they’d realised the propaganda value. The headlines would have been politically devastating: ‘German George Shops At Toff Store But Darling Charlie Is A People’s Prince’ … ‘I’m No Pretender Says Charlie: I Really Love M&S’.

Of course, most M&S stores in 1745 didn’t have accommodation for visitors, but at Carlisle they evidently made an exception, given the importance of the occasion. After all, a royal visit was something special, particularly as the visitor had threatened to lay waste the city, then received its surrender and ridden in on a white charger preceded by more than a hundred Scots pipers. My investigations suggest that rooms were fitted out for the prince in the area close to the manager’s office, probably using a line in Royal Stewart home furnishings that by happy chance was on sale. The accommodation was, as contemporary correspondence confirms, rented to the prince at £5 per day for four days, a very reasonable charge considering the availability of delicious ready meals in the food hall. If only a till receipt had survived to let us know which dishes he preferred – Chicken a la King, perhaps, or maybe Sole Royale.

But we do know that he and his retinue made use of the excellent range of choice wines stocked by M&S – a letter from 1745 states that some two or three dozen bottles were consumed by the guests during their stay. An eyewitness also reported that a large map of England was pinned to the wall, but (since M&S don’t stock this item) it must have come from W.H. Smith just across the street. And of course if only he hadn’t retreated from Derby and come a cropper at Culloden, the advertising in the later 1740s might have been spectacular. ‘Charles isn’t just any prince - he is from the Marks and Spencer Young Chevalier range’.