How Margaret secre tly destroyed thirty black sacks of the Queen Mother's letters
AND The QM thought Mountbatten a ‘bounder’ AND Margaret said Churchill ruined her life AND Lord Snowdon was arrested for shoplifting Marmite in Russia!
NEWSPAPER diarist Kenneth rose kept many of his most sensational stories for his private journals — now published following his death in 2014. Yesterday he told how the Queen sent a six-page letter about the death of one of her corgis. Here, he gives a sparkling insight into an ‘epoch of history’ observing the Queen Mother.
January 4, 1982
Dine with Martin Gilliat [private secretary to the Queen Mother] at Buck’s tonight. He tells me that when the Duke of edinburgh had a big sale at Sotheby’s last year to raise money for the Duke of edinburgh’s Award Scheme, the Queen Mother was asked to contribute.
She said: ‘i don’t know that i have anything we can get rid of.’
eventually, she gave a Seago painting. it fetched £14,000, bought by the Westminster Bank. Today, she lunched with the directors of the Bank, who presented it back to her.
July 20, 1982
LUNCH with the Queen Mother at clarence House. She describes going to see [PM] Ramsay MacDonald at chequers. ‘He took us to see some of the little churches in the neighbourhood. now darling Mrs Thatcher would never do that! But then she has other great qualities such as PATRIOTISM — that’s what we want!’
She says that she thought Dickie Mountbatten [assassinated by the IRA in 1979] was rather a bounder in some ways, [such] as when he drove his speedboat off cowes and made a dangerous wash. i tell the Queen Mother that although he was most kind to me, i have discovered that not all his stories were accurate.
QM: ‘Of course, and there were so many of them!’
May 27, 1983
TO WINDSOR for the unveiling by the QM of the restored Lutyens memorial to King George V. Lots of old soldiers in Brigade ties and their wives in herbaceous hats. The QM takes a broad view of tea: it is sparkling white wine and little things on toast.
June 7, 1983
LUNCH at clarence House. The Queen Mother announces: ‘We are having a picnic today.’ But it is not like anyone else’s picnic.
There is a long table set under the trees with comfortable folding chairs for the guests and a proper dining-room chair with arms for the QM; also a big red velvet footstool for her. As always, lovely silver and china: the handles of the toast racks are in the form of Royal coronets and there is my favourite claret jug, an eagle with ruby eyes.
Two footmen in black livery, one in red. We begin with asparagus, covered with scrambled egg; then chicken, then strawberries embedded in thick cream; then cheese.
Some wartime reminiscences, particularly of Winston arriving late for lunch at the Palace one day, rather flustered and carrying a little despatch box. ‘i bring you victory,’ he announced. it was news of el Alamein.
Queen Victoria crops up in our conversation, too, and i tell the
QM of how spectacles were forbidden at court in those days. it does not surprise her at all. She says: ‘Of course i make no bones about wearing them.’
in fact, i don’t think she has ever worn them in public: her speeches are typed for her in enormous letters on a special typewriter.
September 20, 1983
I TAKE [former Labour PM] Jim callaghan to dine at the Hyde Park Hotel grill room. When Robert Menzies, the PM of Australia, died, the Queen asked Jim if he would like to be Lord Warden of the cinque Ports. He felt he could not take it on when still PM, so suggested the Queen Mother instead.
At Balmoral, the Queen said to him: ‘Tell my mother after church.’ So she said to the QM: ‘The PM has something to say to you. You had better go into the library.’
Jim told the QM about the cinque Ports, and she was delighted to accept. She added: ‘i am so relieved. When the Queen told me that you wanted to talk to me, i thought you were going to rebuke me for something i had said.’
December 6, 1983
LUNCH with [former PM] Harold Macmillan. He has known the Queen Mother for much of his life. ‘But i still do not have the remotest idea of what goes on in her mind.’ We laugh over her splendid extravagance and all those footmen when lunching in the garden.
Macmillan: ‘That is what happens when a poor woman marries a rich man. But when a rich woman marries a poor man, she makes a good frugal wife.’
April 19, 1984
[FORMER assistant private secretary to both the Queen and her father] edward Ford says that George Vi’s outbursts of temper — or gnashes, as they were called in the family — were probably epileptic.
September 16, 1984
[LORD Lieutenant of Gwynedd] Michael Duff recently went to the ballet with the Queen Mother. At supper, she said: ‘My footman is so lucky. He went to the first night. i couldn’t get in.’
April 11, 1985
MARTIN GILLIAT to dine. He thinks it wrong that the Duchess of Windsor has never become HRH. ‘i hope that before she dies, my employer may come to see the lack of charity in this attitude.’ i have never heard him express a stronger opinion. He tells me the Queen Mother never cared for either of the Mountbattens. She felt that Dickie was an outsider vis-à-vis the real Royals, such as Princess Marina, so rarely entertained them.
June 27, 1985
MARTIN GILLIAT is worried about the strain which the forthcoming tour of canada will put on both him and the Queen Mother. ‘The telephone number at the top of my list is Kenyon, the undertaker.’
January 16, 1989
MARTIN GILLIAT tells me of a gaffe made by [author and broadcaster] Ludovic Kennedy when he met the Queen Mother recently at somebody’s house. He told her he had been busy the previous weekend writing her obituary.
February 17, 1989
LUNCH with the QM at clarence House. Queen elizabeth, in a simple little green flowered frock and large diamond spray, gives me that lovely greeting of leaning back, tilting her head and holding out her hand with a dazzling smile.
When asked what i should like to drink, i decide to follow Queen elizabeth and have gin and Dubonnet. Meanwhile, an old radiogram in the corner is pouring out favourites of the 1940s. The QM has much praise for Alec Home, Peter carrington and also Selwyn Lloyd — ‘a particularly good egg’.
But when Shirley Williams comes up in conversation, the QM lowers her glass below the table in that celebrated gesture of disapproval. During the last few minutes of our talk, she feeds biscuits to one of her corgis.
May 13, 1989
LUNCH with the Queen Mother. i say i regret that Philip Ziegler is writing another life of the Duke of Windsor. Queen Mother fervently agrees — ‘it has been raked over so often.’ She goes on: ‘i wonder whether he really liked england. i am certain, however, that he did want to come back as King.’
That is a most important historical statement, and sheds much light on her relationship with the Windsors.
The QM also confides how much she dislikes the pound coin. ‘So when i put something in the
collection at church, it is always a Scottish banknote.’
July 15, 1989
PAMELA HICKS [mountbatten’s daughter] tells me the sense of being Royal or not persists in curious ways. When Dickie mountbatten once asked the king for a photograph of himself with the Queen mother, he asked whether it was for Dickie or [his wife] edwina. if for Dickie, it would be signed ‘Bertie and elizabeth’; if for edwina, ‘George Ri and elizabeth R’.
May 6, 1994
TO CLARENCE House for lunch with the Queen mother. She talks in that light, distinctive, emphatic voice, saying that she will have nothing to do with the channel Tunnel — being opened at that very minute by the Queen.
January 10, 1995
To PRATT’S for a drink. a barrister tells me that the Queen mother came to dine in the middle Temple