Corgi and Bess: More Wit and Wisdom from the House of Windsor. Thomas Blaikie

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      Lunching officially at the Savoy in 1994, the Queen Mother happened to be sitting next to one of her racing trainers, Nicky Henderson. Neither of them had been keeping an eye on the clock. Which was a mistake, as they wanted to catch the 3.10 at Fontwell Park and it was now 3.00. They’d better look sharp. The Queen Mother set off in her Rolls and the trainer followed behind in a taxi. They tore down the Strand, screeched through Trafalgar Square and then it was a clear, high-speed run to Clarence House. In at the front door, up the stairs, snap the set on — they were just in time. The Queen Mother was then 94.

      At Badminton during the War, Queen Mary said, ‘So that’s what hay looks like!’ She was then aged 70.

      When Princess Margaret was born, her father was all set to register the event at the Glamis post office when he noticed that the next slot in the book was Number 13. He thought he’d leave that for another baby and come back later. There was in fact a new-born but unregistered infant called George conveniently available for the purpose. His mother was told by the Glamis postmaster to come and register her child at once. She wasn’t too keen to be Number 13 either but conceded that ‘the Duchess was a charming person and spoke to us often as we cut through the Castle grounds on the way to church on Sundays’.

      During the War, when some good folk who lived at the gates of Royal Lodge were badly bombed, their friends were most dismayed. But, rushing round to comfort and console, they found the pair in the best of spirits, indeed apparently buoyed up by the whole experience. It turned out the King and Queen had got there first. The husband was wearing one of the King’s suits and the wife one of the Queen’s dresses.

      By ancient right the Lords Kingsdale are entitled to keep their hats on in the presence of the Sovereign. But the incumbent in Queen Victoria’s time came unstuck when showily trying to exercise his privilege. The tiny Queen glared at him and his hat for a good while. ‘We are also a lady,’ she said eventually, putting a stop to this nonsense once and for all.

      Staying at Badminton during the War, Queen Mary took up with a little dog (dogs had never before been her scene). She used to feed it a dog biscuit in some state after dinner each night. Once an elderly bishop was dining and Queen Mary passed on to him this responsibility. But the cleric was deaf. Clearly he thought he was being asked to undergo some curious Royal test; refusal was out of the question. He ate the biscuit himself.

      At a garden party on a sunny day, Queen Mary wore so many diamonds she became just a blaze of white light, not really distinguishable as a person. One evening she wore five diamond necklaces, and a miffed lady remarked, ‘She’s bagged the lot.’

      For a routine visit to the East End in the morning, Queen Mary wore pale green lamé and emeralds.

      Shattered by the relentlessness of Court life, especially the endless standing, Queen Victoria’s doctor fainted dead away after dinner one day. ‘And a doctor too,’ was the Queen’s only comment. Harsh but fair.

      In the 1950s, the Queen Mother took control of a Comet during a test-flight and put her foot down so hard on the accelerator that the plane began to porpoise. She was thrilled although she did acknowledge the other passengers might not have been. Later on, when Comets began mysteriously to crash and the phenomenon of metal fatigue was discovered, the Chairman of BOAC always recalled this flight with horror.

      During the War, the Queen Mother, then Queen, learned to use a revolver, so that, should the Germans come after her, she could resist. ‘I won’t go down like the others,’ she told Harold Nicolson, referring to all her weedy Royal colleagues, who had run away rather than face the enemy. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who by special arrangement walked through the grounds of Buckingham Palace every morning on his way to work, was alarmed that the gardens seemed to be alive with the sound of gunfire. ‘It is the Queen’s target practice,’ he was told. He decided to go by another route.

      The Prince of Wales isn’t extravagant. He just doesn’t have any idea about money. He once asked if £40,000 were a lot to spend on a table. This was in the early 1990s. Somebody sensibly replied, ‘It depends on the table.’ To the suggestion that he might economise by raiding his mother’s vast store of spare furniture, he responded, ‘Oh, no, she won’t part with a stick.’

      Part of the 1977 Jubilee celebrations involved a late-night fireworks display on the Thames followed by an appearance of the Royal Family on the Buckingham Palace balcony. After this, the Queen Mother, then aged 77, wanted to go to bed. Clarence House being only a few hundred yards away, there should have been no difficulty. But the crowds around the Palace were impenetrable. She was shut in. The police advised her to wait. But that, she declared, was out of the question. And who can blame her? She was after all Queen Dowager and last Empress of India. So she set off and the end of it all was that her car had to thread its way along a vastly circuitous route and it took 45 minutes to get back home. When at last, rather steamed up, she was inside the front door, she said, ‘That was most pusillanimous.’

      At Eton, pupils taking A level History of Art were encouraged to develop their personal enthusiasms when it came to choosing a topic for the special project which is a required part of the course. ‘I know,’ said Prince William. ‘I’ll do Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings.’ This was a good choice and practical too, since most of the drawings are in his granny’s collection at Windsor Castle.

      For Christmas 2002, Princes William and Harry received from their father — among other things, one hopes — a silk top hat apiece, acquired from Lock & Co. of St James at a cost of £1,200 each.

      Visitors to Badminton in the 1980s were mystified by the sudden appearance of a mean little strip of carpet running up one side of the stairs. It turned out that, on her last visit, the Queen Mother had said, ‘Unless you do something about those treacherous bare stairs, I’m not coming again!’ Well, that was a terrible threat but the Beauforts, owners of Badminton, didn’t have much money. The miniature run of carpet for the sole use of one Royal old lady was all they could afford.

      Sir Peter Hall found himself in a bit of a bind when, emerging from the breakfast room at a Royal party for the 1977 Jubilee bearing three plates of scrambled eggs and with a cigar in his mouth, he bumped into the Duke of Edinburgh. How was he to speak? His difficulty was immediately resolved by a footman, who stepped up, removed the cigar from his mouth and stood by holding it until Sir Peter’s conversation with the Duke was over. It is not known whether the attendant then put it back in the great man’s mouth.

       Family Rivalry — Who is the Loveliest of Them All?

      Big panic during rehearsals for George VI’s Coronation — the orb, part of the near-sacred Coronation regalia, was nowhere to be found, until someone heard a giveaway rumbling from under a table. Princess Margaret, aged 6, had seized it and was rolling it around on the floor.

      In later life Princess Margaret was recalling younger and happier days when her father would be practising for Trooping the Colour at home and used to let her try on his bearskin. But her story came to a peculiar halt. Evidently there was something else of significance she had to say, something that almost couldn’t be said. ‘Sometimes …’ she murmured, ‘he let me put on the crown.’

      At Windsor Castle Princess Margaret once flung open a door and shouted into the room where the Queen was sitting with some top person or other, ‘Nobody would speak to you if you weren’t the Queen!’

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