to establish that his lavish hospitality had caused them to put on weight. Drawing room The drawing room is described by Jenkins as "the nearest Sandringham gets to pomp". On one of her two visits to the house, Victoria recorded in her journal that, after dinner, the party adjourned to "the very long and handsome drawing room with painted ceiling and two fireplaces". The room contains portraits of Queen Alexandra and her daughters, Princess Louise, Princess Victoria, and Princess Maud of Wales, by Edward Hughes. White marble statues complete what has been described as a "tour de force of fashionable late-Victorian decoration". Ballroom The ballroom was added by Edis in 1884, to overcome the inconvenience of having only the saloon as the major room for entertaining. As this was also the main family living room, it had previously been necessary to remove the furniture when the saloon was required for dances and large entertainments. Alexandra recorded her delight at the result, "Our new ballroom is beautiful I think & a great success & avoids pulling the hall to pieces each time there is a ball or anything". At the time of Queen Victoria's visit in 1889, the room was used for a theatrical performance given by Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Queen Elizabeth II used the room for entertainments and as a cinema. Dining room The walls of the dining room are decorated with Spanish tapestries including some by Goya which were a gift from Alfonso XII of Spain. The walls are panelled in oak, painted light green for Queen Mary who had been inspired by a visit to a Scottish castle. Jill Franklin's study of the planning of Victorian country houses includes a photograph of the dining room at Sandringham with the table laid for dinner for twenty-four, a "very usual" number to seat for dinner in a major country house of the time. Appreciation Sandringham House has not been admired by critics. Its chief fault is the lack of harmony between Humbert's original building and Edis's extensions, "a contrast between the northern and southern halves of the house (that) has been much criticised ever since". The architectural historian John Martin Robinson wrote in 1982, "Sandringham, the latest in date of the houses of the British monarchy, is the least distinguished architecturally". In his biography of Queen Mary, James Pope-Hennessy compared the house unfavourably to "a golf-hotel at