by Kitty Kelley
* “It’s the lowest honor you can have from Britain,” Paul McCartney told Newsweek thirty years later, explaining the honor bestowed no title (“not so much as a sir”) and little prestige. The milkman, who delivered to the Prime Minister’s official residence, received the MBE. This was not lost on Britain’s biggest pop star. “It’s the lowest, ” said McCartney. “But you can’t sit around saying, ‘God, I wish they’d make me a sir.’ ”
The Queen finally bestowed a knighthood on the Beatle in 1997, citing McCartney’s “services to music” in her New Year’s Honors List. Acknowledging the honor, Sir Paul said, “It’s been a hard day’s knighthood.”
* The Royal Marriage Act of 1772 requires that all relatives of the sovereign who might succeed to the throne—the Earl is seventeenth in line—ask for permission to wed. Reluctantly the Queen gave her divorced cousin permission to remarry, but he paid dearly—for years. He was ostracized from the court. He was not invited to the funeral of his uncle the Duke of Windsor or to the wedding of the Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne. He was forced to retire early as chancellor of York University and had to resign as artistic director of the Edinburgh Festival.
* The Palace press secretary was shocked when reporters suggested that Her Majesty hold regular press conferences. “It would be in keeping with a film star,” said Commander Colville, “but not with the Queen. The monarchy doesn’t need that sort of publicity.”
* The Duke of Edinburgh was not a rock and roll fan. During a Royal Variety show, he scowled at the performance by Tom Jones and then asked the singer, “What do you gargle with—pebbles?”
The next day, in a speech to businessmen, the Prince mentioned the singer. “He’s a young man of about twenty-five or something, probably worth about three million [$6 million],” said Philip. “It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are most hideous songs.”
* The title Prince of Wales is reserved for the eldest son of the reigning sovereign, but it is not hereditary. The title is conferred only by the sovereign’s personal grant.
* Within a few years the Queen knew she had made a mistake in cooperating with the BBC to make Royal Family. Viewing the film is almost impossible in the United Kingdom. Since the Queen retains the copyright, she requires a viewing fee of approximately $70, plus written permission from the Palace. That permission is rarely, if ever, given.
† The film was shown three times in the United Kingdom, twice in the United States, and once in 124 other countries. The Palace declined to divulge the amount of money earned, but industry estimates placed the amount at $2.5 million.
† In deference to her mother, she did not invite the Duke of Windsor to his brother’s burial.
* The outtakes—more than thirty-eight hours of film left on the cutting room floor—were shipped to the royal archives at Windsor Castle.
* Charles received $500,000 a year from his Duchy of Cornwall properties, plus $125,000 salary as Prince of Wales. By 1995 he received more than $4 million a year from his Duchy properties and paid 40 percent in taxes.
† Camilla bragged to her brother-in-law that she had been the first woman to seduce Prince Charles. “She told me that she approached him [in 1971], but he didn’t know how to have sex,” said Richard Parker Bowles. “He didn’t know how to do it. She laughed and said, ‘Pretend I am a rocking horse.’ ”
† To illustrate the entanglement of British titles: Patricia Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Mountbatten—more correctly Earl Mountbatten of Burma—married John Knatchbull, who inherited his father’s title and became Lord Brabourne. Patricia Mountbatten Knatchbull then became Lady Brabourne. Her father, having no male heirs, asked the Queen to give his title to his eldest daughter. Upon Mountbatten’s death, Lady Brabourne became Countess Mountbatten of Burma. Upon her death, her son, Norton Knatchbull, will inherit the title. Until she dies, he has the courtesy title of Lord Romsey.
* British students who want to enter a university take A-level examinations in subjects of their choice. The best students take four exams. Average students take three. Poor students take two. Charles took two.
* While removing himself from the line of succession, Prince Michael retained the standing for his children. He said that any children of the marriage would be raised in the Church of England. So his son, Lord Frederick Windsor, and his daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, remain in the line of succession.
* Lichfield’s mother, Anne, was the daughter of John Bowes-Lyon, brother of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
* The Sea Scouts are the maritime counterpart of the Boy Scouts. They tie knots and cook sausages in tin cans. Princess Margaret was their honorary patron.
* Former MP Willie Hamilton told the author in 1993: “I was subjected to assassination threats when I demanded an investigation of royal finances…. The Queen’s advisers arrogantly told us to give them the money. ‘Never mind what the Queen is worth,’ they said. ‘Never mind how rich she is. We want more money. You give us the money.’ And we very tamely did. They knew they had a subservient government and that we were afraid of doing anything to offend the monarchy—then.”
† The more socially elevated position is held by Ladies of the Bedchamber, who are married to peers. The Ladies are chosen for purely personal qualities and attend to the Queen Mother on specific public occasions. The Women of the Bedchamber work full-time shifts of two weeks at a time and attend to personal needs such as shopping and answering letters.
* “The Duke of Edinburgh is a useless, reactionary, arrogant parasite,” said Arthur Latham, a Labor MP. “He’s the most well-paid social security claimant in Britain simply for being his wife’s husband.”
† The Queen also used the word “common” as an indictment. She applied it with disdain to the actor who had played the role of King George VI in Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, the television series. “Andrew Ray,” said Her Majesty, “is far too common to have played my father.”
* The Queen and Prince Philip refer to the six-foot blond Princess as “Our Val” because of her strong resemblance to the Valkyries, warrior maidens of German myth.
When asked by a magazine what he would give his worst enemy for Christmas, Viscount Linley (son of Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret) quipped, “Dinner with Princess Michael.”
* In 1994 the Queen’s footman was paid $12,000 a year, plus a two-room apartment.
* Historians praised the Queen for her progressive “pee” signs, pointing out that her predecessor Queen Elizabeth I had been so backward that she’d refused to grant a patent for a water closet because she felt it would encourage impropriety.
* Mountbatten fretted about the negative impression forming over the Queen’s fortune. In 1972 he wrote to Prince Philip: “Unless you can get an informed reply published [in an establishment paper like the Times ] making just one point, the image of the monarchy will be gravely damaged. It is true that there is a fortune, which is very big, but the overwhelming proportion (85%?) is in pictures, objets d’art, furniture, etc. in the three State-owned palaces. The Queen can’t sell any of them, they bring in no income. So will you both please believe a loving old uncle and NOT your constitutional advisers, and do it.” He did not do it.
* So great was fear of public anger over the abdication that on the night of King Edward VIII’s farewell address to the nation in 1936, the sentries guarding Buckingham Palace were issued live ammunition for the first time in history.
* The separation statement was issued from Kensington Palace because it is Princess Margaret’s home, and according to royal protocol, she is the head of her family.
* Although relations between the Queen and Mountbatten had always been warm, one subject caused them to cool: Japan. In 1971 Her Majesty invited Emperor Hirohito to Britain for a state visit. And she restored the seventy-four-year-old Mikado to the Order of the Garter. He had been stripped of it after Japanese forces attacked the Allies in 1941. His visit made Mountbatten furi
ous. He was further enraged in 1975 when the Queen made a state visit to Japan. “You should have waited until I was dead,” he told her.
Mountbatten, who had fought the Japanese for more than three years and served as Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia, never forgave Japan its wartime savagery. But the Queen pointed to the passage of time since hostilities ended and what she saw as the need for reconciliation. “The Emperor is an old man now, Dickie,” she said. Mountbatten snorted. “He’s a doddering, incompetent old fascist.”
* Raine’s husband, Gerald Dartmouth, filed for divorce on May 29, 1976, and threatened to name Johnny Spencer for alienation of affections. When Raine admitted to adultery, her husband deleted Spencer’s name from the public document and cited him only as “the man against whom the charge has not been proved.”
* During a 1980 trip to New York, Raine corrected an American journalist who described her as the Countess of Spencer. Raine explained that she reflected her husband’s title and he was the Earl Spencer, not the Earl of Spencer. She said that earls whose names are part of their title count for more socially than earls named for a place.
* In March 1980 Private Eye published an item about Andrew Parker Bowles on duty without his wife, who elected to stay in England: “Andrew, 39, is married to a former (?) Prince Charles fancy, Camilla Shand, and if I should find the royal Aston Martin Volante outside the Parker Bowles mansion while the gallant Colonel is on duty overseas, my duty will be clear.” The next month the Daily Mail reported that Prince Charles was to preside over the Zimbabwe independence celebrations. His official escort was “old flame, Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles.” Noting that Andrew Parker Bowles would be in England, the report said: “Buckingham Palace officials have always been happy to see Charles in the company of happily married women because such sightings cannot give rise to rumour.”
* The nude photos of Diana were offered for sale in 1993 by a German magazine but were withdrawn and given to her. “They have no journalistic relevance for us,” said the editor, “and could only be used to satisfy voyeurism.”
* No other Prince of Wales since Charles II, three hundred years earlier, took so long to make up his mind about getting married. Only two others—James Stuart and Henry V from even earlier times—were still unmarried at the age of thirty.
* By 1996 only Prince Rainier of Monaco and King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand had reigned longer than Queen Elizabeth II.
* Writing in the Daily Telegraph in 1993, Alastair Forbes challenged the royal denial and said the authenticity of the taped conversations had been “proved to me beyond doubt, despite the Palace’s glib denial.”
* Years later, after his retirement, the former Archbishop confided to his biographer that the Prince of Wales was severely depressed before his marriage because he was in love with another woman. He also described Diana as a “schemer.”
* The bride was allowed to invite one hundred people and her parents fifty. The bridegroom was allotted three hundred invitations, which he distributed to his beloved nanny, Mabel Anderson; former girlfriends like Sabrina Guinness and Susan George; and, of course, his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, and her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles.
* “John Bowes-Lyon had to apologize to Diana when it appeared in print that she was frothing at the mouth for a few seconds,” said columnist Taki Theodoracopulos in 1993. “She has a slight disease that resembles epilepsy, which John Bowes-Lyon knew from the Queen Mother. He told me about it and I, of course, told Nigel [Dempster], who, like the dumb shit he is, used it in his book [ Behind Palace Doors, written in 1993 with Peter Evans]. When the book came out, John had to write a note to Diana, saying, ‘I apologize and I had nothing to do with that.’ ”
* Months later the Princess was pregnant and announced her news to the royal family at Balmoral. The Queen ordered Champagne to celebrate. Within a week Diana had miscarried. She became pregnant a third time in 1983 and gave birth to Prince Harry on September 15, 1984.
* When the author called the actor in 1996 to confirm the 1985 incident, Eastwood’s agent said to delete the “made-my-day” quote: “We don’t use that line anymore.”
* This image of Prince Andrew, as a highly eligible bachelor, appeared in The Appallingly Disrespectful Spitting Image Book. Entitled “Hot Dog,” its caption read: “Andy is by far the dishiest royal, not having inherited many of the genetic disorders which mar the royal bloodline. Not for him the hump of Richard III, nor the babbling insanity of Canute but rather the legendary genitalia of Cuthbert the Ploughman (815– 820) who, according to the legend, plowed a small furrow wherever he went.”
* The Royal Protection Unit of Scotland Yard provides full protection to the monarch, her husband, her heir, the Queen Mother, and all the monarch’s children. Partial protection is provided to some of the Queen’s cousins when they are performing public duties, but not to their spouses. “Most of the time, Prince Michael gets security,” said the former head of security, “but not his wife.”
* Behind their backs, Diana referred to the royal family by their Private Eye nicknames: the Queen was Brenda, the Duke of Edinburgh was Keith. Princess Margaret was Yvonne, Charles was Brian; Edward was Cled (Peter Phillips’s abbreviation of Uncle Ed), and Diana herself was Cheryl.
* In her reign, the Queen has had six private secretaries—all men. The first four were Sir Alan Lascelles: 1952–1953; Sir Michael Adeane: 1953–1972; Sir Martin Charteris: 1972–1977; Sir Philip Moore: 1977–1986. All were older than the Queen. The last two were younger: Sir William Heseltine: 1986–1990; Sir Robert Fellowes: 1990–.
By the 1990s the Queen’s preference for men showed in her staffing of executive posts within the royal household. Out of forty-nine positions, only four were held by women, and one woman was forced to resign when she married a divorced man. Although much of the Commonwealth is black, the Queen has only ten blacks on her staff of nine hundred, and they hold menial positions.
* The Duchess of York was not the first member of the royal family to be accused of plagiarism. In 1986 Princess Michael of Kent, who wrote Crowned in a Far Country (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), was accused of copying from the author Daphne Bennett. The Princess was forced to pay Bennett several thousand dollars.
† The Duchess of York did not acknowledge the author’s written requests in 1993, 1994, and 1995 for confirmation of her charitable donations from the royalties of Budgie. Her private secretary said, “She donated a certain percentage for so long, then it just ended.”
* “It [Everglades Club] represents in its policies the old-fashioned, albeit somewhat refined, bigotry which is no different in kind from the gutter-level bigot who wears a hood and sheet,” said Arthur Teitelbaum, southern area director of the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors anti-Semitism. “We had alerted the embassy… with the expectation that it would sufficiently value the reputation and sensibilities of the royal family to advise the Duchess not to attend. They chose to turn a blind eye to the character of the club, which we find regrettable.”
† The Palace, which goes along with the Queen’s superstitions, chose March 19 to announce the Yorks’ separation. March 19 had been the date of Princess Margaret’s separation announcement in 1976 and Sarah and Andrew’s engagement announcement was March 19, 1986.
* “The Queen didn’t accept Charles’s resignation,” said Anson’s good friend Maxine Champion, “because the Queen agreed with him. That’s what he told us when he came to Washington, D.C. We had dinner with him one night and he told us all about the Fergie mess.”
* In My Story: The Duchess of York, Her Father and Me (HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), Lesley Player said John Bryan used cocaine. She wrote that Bryan invited her and another woman to his apartment, where he sniffed the drug. Bryan did not comment on the book, but Allan Starkie, his business partner in Oceonics Deutschland, a German construction company, denied Player’s story. “I was there that night in John’s Chelsea flat, and I certainly did not see anyone taking any drugs.” Player indica
ted only three people were present that evening—she, a woman friend, and Bryan.
Starkie, who accompanied the Duchess of York on her charity trips to Eastern Europe, was later arrested in Germany when Oceonics collapsed. He was held in a German jail for five months, pending a police investigation of the company that left debts of $15 million.
In 1995 Bryan, who had moved back to the United States, allegedly offered cocaine and prostitutes to entice investors into a Las Vegas real estate deal. The “investors” were reporters for the British tabloid News of the World, which published the story under the headline “Fergie’s Ex in Vice and Drugs Shame.”
* John Bryan also negotiated for Sarah’s sister, Jane Ferguson Luedecke. He sold exclusive coverage of her second wedding to Hello! magazine for $300,000, but Jane and her husband received only $217,000. They sued Bryan for the rest—$83,000. Sarah was outraged by the lawsuit. Siding with Bryan, she stopped speaking to her sister. A London judge ordered Bryan to repay the money, plus interest, and all court costs. But as of July 1996 Bryan had not paid. The next month he was declared bankrupt.
* After Caroline was found in a compromising position with a naval officer, she was tried for adultery. “Was the man involved an admiral?” she was asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “He wasn’t wearing his hat.” She was not convicted.
* Sarah wanted a lump-sum payment of $10 million, plus $5,000 a month in child support and her title. She received $750,000 for herself and a $2.1 million trust fund for her children, and she lost her title.
* The late Earl Spencer proved right. After his death his son struggled to operate Althorp, a fifteen-thousand-acre estate valued at $132 million. After four years the new Earl Spencer turned it over to a manager, who rented the property for corporate conferences for $5,262 a day. The young Spencer moved to South Africa with his wife and four children. He later separated from his wife but remained in South Africa. Like his father, he, too, exploited the Spencer name for profit. In 1996 he sold several of the family’s honorary titles at auction to pay for new plumbing.