You look awfully like the Queen: Wit and Wisdom from the House of Windsor

You look awfully like the Queen: Wit and Wisdom from the House of Windsor
Thomas Blaikie

For fans of the ‘Windsors’ and ‘Now we are Sixty’: a beautifully illustrated collection of amusing and affectionate stories from inside the royal family.Arriving at the theatre, the Queen and the Queen Mother appeared to be having words. ‘Who do you think you are?’ demanded the Queen Mother. ‘The Queen, Mummy, the Queen.’About twenty years ago the Guardian first published two camp anecdotes about the Queen Mother. Readers reeled to see stories actually printed in a national newspaper that until then had had only an underground existence in certain circles. After that, tales about the royal family became respectable; they were also, quite rightly, believed. Taken as a whole they reflect the contradictory roles we like royalty to fulfil: unworldly and impossibly regal or engagingly domesticated and just like us, or camp, worldly and outrageous.In this affectionate tribute Thomas Blaikie has gathered together a compendium of stories, many of them never published before, which provide access to a unique world. How exactly does a Queen react when she finds her footmen draped in her jewels? What does she do to amuse herself as she whiles away the hours sitting for her portrait? And how did the Duchess of Windsor and the Queen Mother really get on? This beautifully illustrated book answers these questions and poses many more in its celebration of the diverse personalities of the House of Windsor.

You Look Awfully Like the Queen

Thomas Blaikie

WIT AND WISDOM FROM THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

ILLUSTRATED BY GILL TYLER

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u31df40d1-68dd-5985-82b7-c90767145ec3)

Title Page (#u3c86307a-cb7e-5578-af68-17eb2f33b7e4)

Foreword (#uc510ff16-a22d-5493-bc5b-74e183c3e741)

Gracious Me (#u3514312e-b5d2-5d97-bfaa-8d2b99a86bcb)

With Top People (#u7fb971c8-779d-5733-ac50-71094dceae83)

Out and About (#u8bad5f32-b578-5609-be7b-42b139d8787e)

At Home (#litres_trial_promo)

Just Like Us (#litres_trial_promo)

The Family of Nations (#litres_trial_promo)

When We Were Young (#litres_trial_promo)

We Are Family (#litres_trial_promo)

Making Do (#litres_trial_promo)

Our Best Friends (#litres_trial_promo)

We Are Amused (#litres_trial_promo)

Patrons of The Arts (#litres_trial_promo)

Sources (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Foreword (#ulink_5a6a2222-23fb-599f-9839-cdd6c6fa6655)

‘How come you know so much about the Royal Family?’ people often ask me. The question is intended as a challenge. Nowadays an interest in the Monarchy has to be justified. As a child I only wanted to hear about people who lived in large houses and had masses of money. I was engrossed in a life of Queen Mary at the age of nine and later, while other boys at school were leafing through Autocar or setting fire to things, I was slaving in the pottery room on a head of that same queen – capturing her marcel wave in clay was a nightmare. Even now, at forty-four, it’s a comfort to wonder what the Queen might be doing at the same moment as I am dusting or washing up and still almost impossible to accept her parallel existence in the same universe.

Barking mad, you might say. Well, I have another alarming symptom. While compiling this book, I found that my memory for all the little details about the Royal Family that I have ever read or heard is extraordinarily retentive. Often I would say to a friend, ‘You remember when you told me about the Queen hunting for a hat at Buckingham Palace or that time she found the footmen eating her chocolates…?’ and they would look blank. I will never be able to understand how they could have forgotten. This perhaps explains, among other things, why I have been able to include so many previously unpublished stories here.

On a more serious note, it is difficult to explain the allure of Royalty. Judging by the response to the death of the Queen Mother there are many who know that the killjoy anti-monarchists have got it wrong; on the other hand, the era of uncritical worship is over. I hope that this book reflects the freer and more complex way we feel about the Royal Family now. At times we might want to revel in their strange Alice in Wonderland world where they seem simultaneously down to earth and utterly regal, at others we are more sober – appreciating, especially in the Queen’s case, true wit and style and an engaging and distinctive personality. Whatever the truth, let’s hope they are never replaced by some colourless figure elevated drearily on ‘merit’. Long may they reign over us!

Gracious Me (#ulink_85f95038-9798-5e97-b485-5247249c0861)

At a Tuesday audience Tony Blair raised the subject of what he called ‘the Golden Jubilee’. ‘My Golden Jubilee,’ the Queen gently corrected.

On a 1990s State Visit to the Caribbean, the Queen stopped off at the Cayman Islands, which is a tax-haven where every hotel is of unimaginable luxury. At the press reception she said, ‘I’m so glad we’ve got the Yacht with us this time [referring to the Royal Yacht Britannia]. I seem to remember the last time we came here we had to stay in a guest house.’

An escort commander allowed his horse to block the crowd’s view of the Queen once too often. From inside the carriage, the Queen said, ‘Actually, Captain, I think it’s me they’ve come to see.’

The French government gave a dinner at the Louvre for the Queen during her State Visit of the early 1950s. As they munched their hors d’oeuvres, the Queen revealed that she had never visited the museum before. ‘So,’ somebody said, ‘you’ve never seen the Mona Lisa.’ The Queen admitted that she had not. The next thing anyone knew, the picture was brought into the dining room and left propped up on a chair for the Queen to study at her leisure.

Lady Elwyn Jones hosted a reception for the Pearly Kings and Queens at the House of Lords in the 1970s. One of the Pearly Queens arrived late and rather confused. She approached Lady Elwyn Jones. ‘The bus was terrible,’ she sighed. ‘I’m over eighty. I can’t get into my costume any more but I’ve brought these dolls instead…’ She held up a miniature Pearly King and Queen, slipping her arm around the person standing next to Lady Elwyn Jones. ‘I supposed I’ve missed the Queen Mother. But, perhaps, Lady Elwyn Jones, you could give her these when you next see her.’ ‘Why don’t you give them to her yourself?’ said Lady Elwyn Jones, indicating the person the elderly Pearly Queen was inadvertently hugging. It was the Queen Mother. ‘Oh my gawd,’ exclaimed the old lady, and sank almost to the floor in an arthritic curtsy. ‘No, no,’ said the Queen Mother, ‘you must get up at once. We Queens of East and West have always been equals.’

The Queen’s French is the best of any woman in England, as crisp and neat as her clothing. In 1999, she was subject to a hoax telephone call from a Canadian broadcaster posing as the prime minister of Canada. She behaved impeccably, observing every constitutional nicety, and when the hoaxer suggested that they speak in French she was quite unfazed. ‘Bon, allez,’ she rapped out in triumph.

In 1958 the practice of presenting debutantes at Court was finally dropped. It was really too absurdly snobbish and outdated. But Princess Margaret took a different view. ‘We had to put a stop to it,’ she said. ‘Every tart in London was getting in.’

During the war the Queen Mother got wind that none of the treasures had been evacuated from Apsley House, the London home of the Duke of Wellington. She informed the then duchess, ‘I’m coming round at eleven with a van to take them to Frogmore.’ At eleven sharp a van drew up, the King and Queen appeared and Her Majesty marched around the rooms, picking out all the valuable items and making a list in pencil.

In Venice in 1984, the Queen Mother remained utterly serene and unflappable as her launch began to take in water. In fact, her lady-in-waiting had the greatest difficulty in getting her out before it sank entirely.

Peter Ustinov recalls the extraordinary graciousness of the Queen Mother in the face of some nasty students at Dundee University. She picked up the strips of loo paper they had thrown at her and returned them, saying, ‘Are these yours? Did you mean to leave them there? Wouldn’t you like them back?’

Late in the day at the Cheltenham Races, it is not unusual for quite a few people to be blind drunk, and once somebody in the company of the Queen Mother was very far gone. ‘I have the most marvellous friends,’ she said to anyone who approached. Then there was the slightest, dipping pause. ‘You probably wouldn’t recognise some of them.’

When Michael Fagan intruded into her bedroom in 1982, the Queen’s long experience of being a queen is probably what saved the day. She was superbly poised and managed to engage the disturbed man in conversation until she had the brainwave of offering him a cigarette, which gave her an excuse to get out of the room. (It has never been explained why cigarettes are available in the royal bedroom area.) After the terrific strain of the occasion, the Queen sought relief in doing imitations of the cockney chamber maid coming upon the scene. For days afterwards Her Majesty was going about the Palace, saying, ‘Bloody ‘ell, ma’am, what’s ‘e doin’ in ‘ere?’

The Queen Mother’s skill in diplomacy was put to the test in her own garden at Clarence House when a group of American students were brought to visit by the Reverend Victor Stock. It was at the time of the Watergate scandal. One of the students would keep asking the Queen Mother if she thought President Nixon was guilty. At first she asked the Reverend Stock to explain the role of the constitutional monarchy in Britain. But it was useless. All the student had to say, in the manner of students, was, ‘But, Your Majesty, do you think he did it?’ So the Queen Mother prepared herself for a pronouncement. She became vatic and distant. Finally she said, ‘If I were the president of the United States, I would look in the bag from time to time.’ With that, she disappeared in a cloud of organdie sweet pea prints, leaving her listeners gasping at her wisdom. But the Reverend Stock says that he always wondered what on earth she meant.

Queen Mary often asked, ‘How’s your poor mother?’ or ‘How’s your poor daughter?’ In fact she used this adjective ‘poor’ so frequently that people began to wonder to whom it did not apply. Eventually somebody cracked it. ‘Poor’ meant anybody who wasn’t royal.

The Chairman of the Milk Marketing Board was showing the Queen around an artificial insemination unit when her eye was caught by something unpleasant in a jar. ‘What’s that?’ she inquired. ‘It’s a cow’s vagina, ma’am.’ The Queen didn’t blink. Ask a silly question!’ she said.

Everybody knows that Royal occasions of any kind mean a great deal of waiting. At the Queen’s Coronation even the peers had to be in place hours in advance. So the Prince of Wales rather put his foot in it when he arrived at a ceremonial occasion in Cornwall where Girl Guides were beautifully lined up to greet him. He said to Mrs Annette Bowen, the County Commissioner for the Guides, ‘Have the Guides been waiting long?’ Without hesitation, she replied, What do you think, sir?’ Luckily he saw her point at once. ‘Ask a silly question.’

When King Hassan rudely announced that he was leaving her banquet on board Britannia before it was over, the Queen told him that he wouldn’t be going anywhere until Beating Retreat had been played. When eventually he was allowed to go, the Queen saw him off from the top of the gangplank. Reaching the shore, the king had the nerve to turn in the expectation of a friendly final wave. But no such luck. The Queen wasn’t there; she hadn’t bothered to wait.

Awkward conversation was being made at Buckingham Palace during the State Visit of General de Gaulle and his wife. Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent. With great elaboration, not speaking English much at all, she replied, A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time but it was the Queen herself who came to the rescue. ‘Ah, happiness,’ she said.

Journeying to Balmoral by car, the Queen decreed a comfort stop for her corgis. From the roadside she spied a little shop and thought it would be amusing to buy something from it. Luckily she had her composure, for the shopkeeper said, ‘You look awfully like the Queen.’ She replied, ‘How very reassuring!’