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!’
In the 1950s the newly widowed Queen Mother kept on falling over. Unkind rumours began to circulate as to why. At these times, she was an odd spectacle, bucketing around in a wheelchair with the wounded foot bound but the other sporting a shoe with a massive, but temporarily redundant, five inch heel. Eventually people realised, it was the over-ambitious high heels that were the cause of the trouble.
Queen Mary’s visits to country houses were dreaded by their owners. It was understood that if she took even a glancing interest in an antique it was hers. In this manner, she acquired, among other things, a priceless Queen Anne cupboard. She was not without scruples, however. So that the whole thing might be looked upon as a swap, she sent the people something in return, something equivalent – a tin tray which, as she explained in the accompanying letter, ‘I bought myself from a stall in Benares.’
Arriving on her last visit abroad, aged about 85, the Queen Mother took nearly fifteen minutes to descend the aircraft steps. The gloved and hand bagged welcoming party on the tarmac became increasingly uncomfortable but the Queen Mother was unperturbed. Periodically she would pause on the steps and, looking nowhere in particular, give a little twinkle or a half-wave, suggestive perhaps of greater things to come. Upon finally reaching the ground, she looked up, appeared utterly surprised to notice the welcoming party, and was wreathed in smiles.
When she was prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was troubled to find that, at a reception, both she and the Queen were wearing green. She sent a note round the next day: would it be an idea if the two ladies were to confer about their outfits in future? When the reply came it said, ‘The Queen does not notice what other people are wearing.’
The Queen posting a letter was intended as the highlight of a ceremony at the Bull Ring in Birmingham. The Queen had the letter ready but, sadly, there was no sign of a postbox. So she posted it into her handbag instead.
After portraying the Queen with uncanny brilliance in the stage version of Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution, Prunella Scales found herself at Buckingham Palace to collect a CBE. ‘I suppose you think you ought to be doing this,’ said the true Queen as she pinned on the medal.
Will we ever get to the bottom of what the Queen and Mrs Thatcher really thought of one another? The wife of a prominent politician once came upon the pair in the ladies at a party. The Queen was sitting on the windowsill and the two of them were whispering and giggling and muttering girlishly behind their hands in the most delightfully conspiratorial manner.
At a State Opening of Parliament in the 1980s, Lord Havers, then Lord Chancellor, was not very quick off the mark. At the head of the procession, he did not move off in time and had to be whacked on the back by the Garter King of Arms who was standing behind him. Afterwards the Queen was in very high spirits. She singled out Garter and said, ‘I loved the great biff you gave the Lord Chancellor.’ Nor did her good mood end there. As she drove out from the Victoria Tower, in her fur-trimmed state gown and with George IV’s diadem on her head, she was spotted pulling funny faces at the Duke of Edinburgh.
Prime ministers have been notoriously