King Charles enlisted private chef to cook for royal family member while she recovered from a car crash

King Charles got his private chef to cook for Sophie Winkleman while she was recovering from a horror car crash. Photo / Getty Images

King Charles got his private chef to cook for royal family member Sophie Winkleman while she was recovering from a horror car crash.

The monarch, 75, who was crowned in May, helped the wife of Lord Frederick Windsor – who is the second cousin of Charles and 53rd in the line to the throne – when she was involved in a nightmarish accident while being driven home from the set of Danny Boyle’s TV drama Trust in 2016.

It left her trapped in the back seat of an overturned car, and she told Tatler magazine she “assumed she was a goner”.

But after being cut out of the pulverised vehicle by emergency workers, Winkleman, 43, had to spend only three days in the hospital. She had broken her foot and three bones in her back.

Sophie Winkleman, Lady Frederick Windsor, was trapped in the back seat of an overturned car. Photo / Getty Images

She said that when she returned home she was touched to learn the then-Prince Charles had enlisted the help of his cook at Clarence House to cook for her and her family twice a day for her recovery period.

The actress – the half-sister of Strictly Come Dancing host Claudia Winkleman, 51, and who has starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, said: “It was lifesaving, having this massive thing twice daily that I didn’t have to worry about.”

Winkleman, who is known as Lady Frederick Windsor and is also the daughter-in-law of Prince and Princess of Michael of Kent, also told Tatler about Charles’ work ethic: “I spend a bit of time with him. You see how he works all day long, has a quick supper and then disappears until about 4am to write letters.

”He cares about so many things and he comes up with brilliant solutions.”

She also told Tatler how Prince William, 41, asked an air ambulance colleague to “take good care of her” after her accident, and how Sophie, Countess of Wessex, 58, came to visit her while she was recuperating in hospital.

The full feature on Winkleman is in the February issue of Tatler, available via digital download and on newsstands from January 4.