by Kitty Kelley
* “Philip, who has great humor, joked about my being blacklisted,” recalled Larry Adler. “When we were served White Baits at luncheon one day, he said, ‘In Larry’s honor, the fish should be called Red Baits.’ Philip also suggested that I be listed as ‘a distant country subversive member.’ He later talked to me about the blacklist and asked how I coped with it. He seemed to be very much against such a thing as a blacklist.”
* In 1945 Winston Churchill declined the Garter. “I could not accept the Order of the Garter from my sovereign when I had received the order of the boot from his people,” he said. Later Princess Elizabeth approached him. “If you are Prime Minister when I become Queen, I would like you to be my first Garter Knight.” She kept her promise and made him a knight on April 24, 1953, and installed him June 14, 1954.
* Reports of Elizabeth’s faultless French made her former French chef, René Roussin, smile. “I treasure the memory that I was one of the first Frenchmen to converse with her in my own language,” he wrote in Good Housekeeping in September 1955.
“ ‘Did I say that correctly, Roussin?’ she used to say. And if her accent did not seem to me to be quite right, I never said so. For the only time I did criticize, her little face fell, and she looked so downcast I never had the heart to do it again.”
* British Information Services, an agency of the British government, issued a six-page advisory on the birth of Princess Elizabeth’s baby to resolve the complicated issues of the baby’s rank and title.
* The governess always nourished the hope that she would be forgiven by the royal family. She saved the letters the Queen wrote to her during the 1936 royal tour of Canada, as well as photographs of Lilibet and Margaret Rose in the royal nursery and the birthday and Christmas cards the little girls sent her. Rather than sell her precious mementos, she bequeathed them to Lilibet in her will. When Crawfie died, her box of treasures disappeared into the vaults of the royal archive at Windsor Castle, which the Queen controls.
* The following notice was given to all members of the royal household: “Communications to the Press: You are not permitted to publish any incident or conversation which may be within your knowledge by reason of your employment in the royal service, nor may you give to any person, either verbally or in writing, any information regarding Her Majesty, or any member of the Royal Family, which might be communicated to the press.”
* Forty years later, when Flamini wrote Sovereign: Elizabeth II and the Windsor Dynasty (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1991), he recorded his introduction to Princess Elizabeth but was forced to alter the dialogue slightly. “The publishing lawyers refused to let me quote the future Queen of England calling her sister a ‘bitch,’ ” he said. “Although I was there and heard what she said, the lawyers maintained that no one would ever believe Elizabeth referred to her sister that way.”
* U.S. diplomatic memos suggest that the official invitation to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh had to be coaxed out of the State Department. The cable to the Secretary of State, dated July 5, 1951, states: “Were no official United States invitation forthcoming, it might be misunderstood in England. A press report of today from London quoted a Buckingham Palace official as saying that the Princess would decide whether to visit the United States if and when she gets an American invitation. It is recommended that an official invitation to visit… in the fall be extended at an early date….”
* In response to this author’s query about the title of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the Buckingham Palace Press Office offered a different interpretation: “No other widowed Queen Consort in English history has held a title such as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, as no widowed Queen Consort has either had a reigning Queen as a daughter or lived to see her daughter crowned.”
* Prince Philip’s family—through the marriage of King George I of Hellenes to Grand Duchess Olga, granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I—includes sixteen kings of the House of Oldenburg, seven tsars of Russia, six kings of Sweden, and three kings from the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg-Beck.
† The liberal politics of the Mountbattens shocked their conservative household staff. When a vote canvasser for the Labor Party called on them, Mountbatten said: “Don’t worry about us. It’s the servants you want to work on.”
* When Mountbatten was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, he arrived at Buckingham Palace to be greeted by Prince Philip, also wearing the same uniform. Someone asked, “Who salutes whom when you two meet as Admirals of the Fleet?” Philip said, “We salute each other, but only one of us means it.”
* The coronation became the most expensive celebration in British history. The U.K. government spent more than twenty-five times as much as the U.S. Treasury spent on President Eisenhower’s inauguration in January 1953. British subjects withdrew $25 million from private savings accounts in less than two weeks to spend on the festivities. The spending spree prompted a sober editorial in the London Times that chided the British for taking “a holiday from reality.”
* The Queen chose the photograph of herself and her husband in the state coach being driven to the opening of Parliament on November 4, 1952. She had been agitated that day because the procession was late. And she became upset when photographers crowded around. Then Prince Philip said, “Darling, give them one of your best.” That made her laugh, which produced a smiling photograph—one of the few that did not make her look like a vinegary schoolmarm.
* The term “Queen of England” is universally used and understood. Technically, the proper style is Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
* Upon her return from England, Jacqueline Bouvier became engaged to John F. Kennedy. They married on September 12, 1953. Seven years later he was elected President of the United States. His First Lady decided to wear hats “just like the Queen of England.” She appointed her own couturier like the Queen and issued orders that she wanted her dresses, like the Queen’s, to be originals. “Just make sure no one has exactly the same dress I do,” she wrote to her designer, “or the same color or material.” For her husband’s inauguration, she imitated the Queen by wearing a white gown with a scaled-down version of the Queen’s coronation cloak.
† While Britons were shamed by the abdication of King Edward VIII, Americans were enthralled, and so, naturally, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent a great deal of time in the United States. They became part of New York’s café society and what passes for high society in Palm Beach.
* The conquest of Mount Everest so captured the four-year-old imagination of Prince Charles that he climbed over the largest pieces of furniture in the Palace, announcing that he was “mountaineering.” He snatched the towels from most of the Palace bathrooms to make “base tents.”
† Miniver was a plain white fur esteemed in the Middle Ages as part of a costume.
* The gold state coach was built for George III in 1762 from a design by a Florentine artist, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, who was living in London. The coach, twelve feet high, twenty-four feet long, and eight feet wide, is gilded on the exterior and lined with crimson satin and has been used for every coronation since 1831.
† As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower enjoyed a special relationship with the British royal family, fostered during the Second World War.
* Each of the three children of Henry VIII became sovereign (King Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I) and each died childless.
* In 1995 anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer wrote a book, Exploring English Character, in which he questioned the beliefs, prejudices, and habits of mind of large numbers of the English middle class. He found that the English people as a whole are deeply obsessed with restraining any element of violence and rate gentleness very high as a virtue. They regard impatience and loss of temper as major sins. Being considered a gentleman means everything.
* The Duke of Edi
nburgh Awards Scheme is operated in more than fifty-five countries, but under a variety of names: the Benelux Award in Belgium; the Crown Prince Award in Jordan; the Gold Shield Award in South Africa. In Australia, Jamaica, and New Zealand, it is called the “Dee of Ee.” Prince Philip says, “I don’t give a damn what they call it as long as it is compatible with the one that runs here.”
* In later years the Lord Chamberlain’s duties were modified so the Queen could visit her divorced cousins, her divorced sister, her divorced daughter, and her two divorced sons, including the heir to the throne.
† The restrictions on divorced persons being allowed to share the same air as royalty were relaxed slightly after Peter Townsend’s divorce. Only those divorced persons who were legally blameless for their divorce were admitted into the company of royalty. This policy allowed Townsend, who was wronged by an adulterous wife, to continue in royal service. From 1950 to 1953 he acted as head of the Queen Mother’s household. For the rest of his life, even in exile, his name was listed in Whitaker’s Almanack as an extra equerry to Her Majesty the Queen.
* Years later Princess Margaret said, “I have only twice ever had a row with the Queen. These were probably both about men.” She explained to the historian Elizabeth Longford, “In our family we do not have rifts—a very occasional row, but never a rift.”
† In his discreet autobiography Townsend wrote that he had been prepared to like Philip but… “When I went into exile in 1953, he did not exactly walk me to the door and say goodbye…. He is a German but he does not look very German. He is certainly trenchant and his views are trenchant. I would say he is intelligent without being an intellectual… he could be abrupt and he has this staccato way of talking, although he will often end things up with a joke or a quip.”
* “That particular hour was chosen more for the corgis than for the children,” said the Queen’s footman, explaining the Queen’s daily ritual of feeding her dogs dinner in her sitting room. “One of us brings a tray of bowls to Her Majesty every evening at that time, and the tray contains the individual diets prepared by the kitchen for the Queen’s seven corgis.” The silver bowls were placed on a plastic sheet on the floor, and the Queen mixed each portion with a silver knife and fork.
* Unhappy with so many homosexuals in the royal household, Philip cheered the footman who had been caught in flagrante delicto with a housemaid. “They sacked him,” said the Duke of Edinburgh. “He should have been given a medal.”
* Charles, eleven, stunned his history teacher at Cheam by not knowing that Britain once had a Prince of Wales who became King Edward VIII and then abdicated to become the Duke of Windsor. Years later Charles shocked another history teacher by defending King George III, who suffered attacks of insanity because of the rare and incurable ailment of porphyria. “I happen to admire, appreciate and sympathise with a lot of things he did,” said Charles of the British King who lost the American Colonies in 1783. “He was a marvelous eccentric.”
* About $6 million in U.S. dollars.
* Philip’s rage over the press coverage given to his marriage and his equerry’s divorce surfaced later at a reception. As an official pointed out Gibraltar’s famous cave-dwelling monkeys, Philip asked in a loud voice: “Which are the press and which are the apes?”
* Although Philip had been born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, he renounced his title in 1947 when he became a British subject and assumed the name of Philip Mountbatten to marry Elizabeth. Upon his marriage, he became the Duke of Edinburgh. But most people continued to call him Prince Philip—incorrectly. Technically he was not a prince until his wife made him one.
* The three major U.S. wire services—Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service—filed four hundred thousand words on the royal state visit. The preceding week they sent out three hundred thousand on Sputnik.
* In 1959 Prince Philip made an extended trip to the Far East for almost four months. The Daily Express ran a series of articles entitled “The Woman of the World with an Absent Husband.” Philip had made so many trips out of England that upon his return, one newspaper carried the headline “The Duke Visits Britain.”
† The Garter King of Arms, who is in charge of the sovereign’s heraldic ceremonies, wrote to the Queen to ask whether the entire College of Arms should attend Princess Margaret’s wedding. The Queen shuddered. Her private secretary responded: “While Her Majesty appreciated the loyal feeling of the Officers at Arms, they would understand that for obvious reasons she did not want the wedding to be made more of an occasion of state than was absolutely necessary.”
* Three years later the Queen sadly accepted Macmillan’s resignation as Prime Minister. In a letter, she thanked him for being “my guide and supporter” in international matters. “There have also been, I am afraid, a number of problems affecting my family… which must have occupied a great amount of your time. I should like to put on record my appreciation and gratitude for the unstinting care which you have taken in giving me your advice about them and helping me to find a solution.”
† The Sunday Express, one of Lord Beaverbrook’s three newspapers, acidly congratulated Prince Philip when the Queen was about to give birth: “We are edified that he was able at last to leave his bird shooting at Sandringham and rejoin his wife at this exciting moment of her life.”
* Mountbatten made no pretense about favoring his older daughter, Patricia. In 1953 he wrote her a letter saying, “You know how basically fond I am and always have been of Mummy, you know pretty well about my girl friends, but none of them have [sic] had that magic ‘something’ which you have.” He said that he was fond of his second child, Pamela, “but the mainspring of my love [for her] is that she is your sister and you love her.”
† In 1946 Lord Louis Mountbatten was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma. The next year he was created Baron Romsey and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, with “special remainder” to his male heirs, and if no males, to his eldest daughter and her male heirs. This special remainder, which allowed the title to pass to a female, was a rare concession by the monarch and granted only to military veterans with a record of distinguished war service. After the death of his wife in 1960, Mountbatten told his beloved daughter, Patricia, that he could not contemplate remarriage because he might have a son and disturb the plans he had made for her succession to his title.
† Mountbatten never developed deep affection for David Hicks and never accepted him as a surrogate son the way he did John Brabourne and Prince Philip. In 1972, twelve years after Hicks had married his younger daughter, Mountbatten wrote a letter to Philip in which he said, “Patricia and Pammy could not be sweeter or more affectionate daughters, but one does miss sons—so I am very lucky to have you and John who are both so affectionate and nice to me.”
* Mountbatten objected to his son-in-law’s collaborating on a book. He phoned the writer and invited her for lunch. After a round of drinks he said, “Now, now, Miss Robyns. Be a good girl and give me those tapes.” She refused.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I had all of David’s old gay boyfriends on tape, saying terrible things about him, and I didn’t think it right to release them.” Mountbatten threatened to sue her. She gave in. “I couldn’t fight a man with his money, so we ended up going to his lawyer’s office and burning the tapes.” Hicks waited until after Lord Mountbatten’s death to contact another writer, June Ducas, to resume work on his life story. “June can write whatever she likes, warts and all,” he said in 1995. “I don’t give a damn.”
* When Angus Ogilvy, a commoner, married Margaret’s cousin, Princess Alexandra, daughter of Marina, the Duchess of Kent, on April 24, 1963, he refused the Queen’s offer of an earldom. “I don’t see why I should get a peerage,” said Ogilvy, “simply because I have married a princess.”
* When the Nazis invaded Poland, Radziwill fled Warsaw for London, where he became a British subject. Legally he forfeited the right to use his hereditary title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire,
which had been conferred on his family in the sixteenth century. His insistence on being addressed as Prince Radziwill remained controversial in Britain.
* The Queen admitted her preference for Churchill when asked, “Which of your Prime Ministers, ma’am, did you enjoy your audiences with most?” She said, “Winston, of course, because it was always such fun.”
* The President of the United States was absent from the assemblage of five prime ministers, four kings, four presidents, three premiers, two chancellors, one queen, and one grand duke, who represented their countries at Winston Churchill’s funeral. Lyndon Baines Johnson stayed in his bed at the White House and watched the funeral on television. “The President has a cold,” asserted his press secretary, who added that Johnson’s previous heart attack made his doctors especially vigilant. That Churchill was half American on his mother’s side was a special source of pride to Americans, many of whom were embarrassed that their President did not attend the funeral of the country’s most famous honorary citizen and did not send his Vice President to represent him. Instead the President dispatched his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who came down with a cold in London and could not attend. So the Chief Justice of the United States, Earl Warren, represented America. Former President Eisenhower attended the funeral because he had commanded Allied Forces during World War II.
† Such an appropriate gesture contrasts with Philip’s behavior the day after Churchill’s death when he wanted to go on a shoot. Mountbatten said it was inappropriate during a period of national mourning, but Philip was unconvinced. “Well, I won’t anyway,” said Mountbatten, who refused to accompany him. Philip canceled the shoot.
* The first Court Circular was issued in the eighteenth century by King George III, who became annoyed by newspaper inaccuracies about the royal family’s activities. So the King appointed the Court Newsman to prepare a definitive document to be supplied to newspapers every day.