The royal family do not like to be watched while eating… or walking. Margaret Thatcher was very nervous of the late Queen and was mocked for her curtsey. Meghan Markle was celebrated for hers.
Some of the revelations in Craig Brown’s upcoming biography about the royal family, A Voyage Around The Queen, might be more surprising than others. The book, which is released tomorrow, sees the royal writer turn his attention to the late Queen Elizabeth II and it is packed with fun, fizzy recollections, from anecdotes about washing-up gloves to the late Queen’s go-to beauty hacks.
From Prince Philip’s uncle’s vast pornography collection to Charles’ confusion over a teabag, here are some of the things we learnt.
1. The Queen wore Marigolds to do the washing up
Once a year, anyway. After the annual Balmoral DIY barbecue , Tony Blair reports, the Queen pops her Marigolds on and does the washing up.
“You sit there having eaten, the Queen asks you if you’ve finished, she stacks the plates and goes off to the sink”.
2. Selfies are not new, even if the format is
In 1944 Prince Philip sent the Queen a photograph of himself for Christmas. It was well received – “she danced round the room with it for joy!”
3. The Royal Family do not like to be watched while eating… or walking
For such a relentlessly observed bunch of people, it’s perhaps not surprising that behind closed doors, they do not like to be watched. Invisibility is key, “Do not look anyone in the eye… The Royal Family does not like to be watched while eating”.
They also don’t like to be watched while walking. “Maids would dart into a walk-in cupboard under the stairs so as not to be seen when the Queen was coming down the main hall”.
4. The royals live in a ‘constant state of fear’
Prince Harry described it in his book Spare as being defined by paranoia.
“Fear of the public. Fear of the future. Fear of the day the nation would say: OK shut it down”.
5. Margaret Thatcher was very nervous of the Queen
“Why does she always sit on the edge of her seat”, the Queen asked.
There’s another long-winded though excellent story about the two women having a tug of war over a teapot.
6. Thatcher was mocked for her curtsey...
Her reverence of the monarch was manifested in how low she curtsied, reported the Queen’s Press Secretary Sir Bernard Ingham.
“I’ve never seen anyone go so low… it used to be a bit of a joke — how low will she go this time?”
7. ...But Meghan Markle was celebrated for hers
After the first meeting between Meghan Markle and the Queen everyone remarked on how good Markle’s curtsey was. “So good! So deep!”
8. The Queen’s room on the Royal Yacht Britannia was like a Travelodge
But she adored the yacht for the normality it afforded her (or at least the illusion of normality; there were still 240 plus-staff), even though the room was “single-bedded… it wouldn’t look out of place in a Travelodge”.
Incidentally, the Duke of Edinburgh’s pillowcases on-board were the same size as the queen’s, but on his specific request did “not have the lace borders”.
9. The royals were troublesome in-laws
The queen mother referred to Prince Philip privately as “the Hun”, the word used by the Allies to the forces of Germany and Austro-Hungary in World War One to conjure up images of an enemy. This was in spite of the fact that the Windsors had only recently changed their name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in order to avoid that very charge, Brown reports.
In fact, both the Queen's parents felt he was “rough… uneducated and would probably be unfaithful”.
10. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip received some unusual wedding presents
They were given more nylon tights and bibles than anything else — and they received so many gifts that a 264 page book was needed to document them.
Princess Margaret gave them a fitted picnic case as a wedding present; they received 500 cases of tinned pineapple sent by the government of Queensland.
11. Prince Philip’s mother’s brother had a vast collection of pornography
The Marquess of Milford Haven, who brought him up, owned one of the largest collections of pornographers in private hands.
And incidentally, the Marquess’s wife once ordered a tub of champagne in which to soothe her feet after a dance competition.
12. Prince Philip would ‘belittle’ Prince Charles as a child
This was the report by Jonathan Dimbleby, anyway, in a semi-authorised biography based on conversations with Prince Charles.
Even the Duke’s closest friends found his behaviour “inexplicably harsh”. The small boy was frequently brought to tears by the “banter” to which he was subjected… the conclusion was that he thought Charles “a bit of a wimp”.
13. The Queen did not watch The Queen’s Speech
On Christmas Day the Queen sat in another room while the rest of her family watched her on TV.
14. Three-year old Prince Charles was very funny (possibly inadvertently)
On being told that his grandfather the King was found dead by someone who had taken in his tea, three-year-old Prince Charles asked “who drank the tea?”.
15. It’s not easy for the royals to use the loo
Peter Russell, the butler to the Duke and Duchess of Kent in the 1950s remembers it thus: “It was the practice of the Queen or the Queen Mother that if they wanted to use the loo, they informed the Duchess, who in turn told me. I then told the head housemaid, who arranged for a housemaid to stand near the door, holding a hand towel for appearance’s sake. The house-keeper would tell me when all was at the ready. I would tell the Duchess who discreetly would inform Her Majesty.”
Phew.
16. Her Majesty sometimes found it difficult to find common ground with… commoners
On one occasion, on tour in Canada and being shown around a prefab home, she answered “I find it difficult keeping my floors clean too”.
What else could she have said, asks Brown, fairly enough — “that’s never been a worry for me, what with my vast staff and limitless money”.
17. The then-Prince Charles found a teabag very confusing
When he visited the White House and was offered a tea bag by the waiter, to put in his pot of hot water — “What IS it? I mean what does one DO with it?”
18. Salt on the right, mustard and pepper on the left
Paul Burrell revealed that even the tray on which tea is served is “perfectly orchestrated”.
The cup and saucer have handle and spoon pointing towards five o’clock, plates and saucers with royal crests at 12 o’clock, salt on right, mustard on left with the pepper behind… No more than three balls of butter in the dish.
19. The Queen’s Christmas gift giving was practical, thoughtful and thorough
At Bucks Palace every year, she would receive every one of the 300 members of staff individually, bid them a happy Christmas and give them a small present which they had previously selected for themselves from a catalogue.
All the women would be obliged to wear white cotton gloves, the Queen would have bare hands.
20. She was naughty just once as a child
This was according to her former governess and confidante Crawfie (whose revelations resulted in her becoming a “non-person”, evicted from her Kensington palace cottage and shunned by the royal family from then on), when she had a sudden and extreme act of rebellion during a French class with Mademoiselle, and without warning placed an ink pot on her head, from which dark ink trickled down her face and dyed her golden curls blue.
21. The Queen would reapply her lipstick in public, mid-event
“It could come as a surprise [to guests] to see her dip into her handbag, mid-event, whip out a mirror and lipstick, and set to work on her lips. She would execute this task with single-minded efficiency”.
Brown ascribes this as a way to take a break “from the exhausting business of listening to other people talk about themselves”.
A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown is published on August 29 (Harper Collins)
