Queen Elizabeth spent £11,843 using the royal train for a 43-mile round trip for a day at the races - a journey available to ordinary passengers on the same line for a £5 return ticket.
Mile-for-mile, her trip to watch the Derby emerges as the most expensive journey made by any member of the royal family last year, according to Buckingham Palace.
But the Duke of Edinburgh (77) and Princess Margaret (67) have used senior citizen passes to obtain discounts on first class rail travel to Cambridge and Brighton.
The royal household also reclaimed some travel costs associated with the funeral of Princess Diana by claiming on her insurance cover.
Earl Spencer has released the first pictures of a new museum devoted to the life of his sister, Princess Diana. The museum, which opens to the public today on her 37th birthday, is housed in former stable blocks on Althorp Estate, where she is buried.
The fifth wife of Idi Amin, the former Ugandan dictator, is running a modest African cafe serving stewed goat and cow hoof in gravy in a shabby corner of east London.
Sarah Kyolaba Amin (43), who left Amin in 1982 to seek asylum in Germany, owns the Krisna restaurant in West Ham, where many of the locals know nothing about her past.