Why the Queen Mum kept mum
QUESTION What was the reason for the Queen Mother’s refusal to give interviews?
QUEEN Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, did not give interviews but communicated brilliantly by deploying her considerable charm and was not averse to playing to the cameras when she thought it might do the trick.
Although she did speak publicly from time to time and always with warmth, clarity and good sense, her reluctance to give interviews was a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’.
In early 1923, she became engaged to Prince Albert, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. When their engagement was announced, the then 22-year-old Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, ninth of ten children of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, made a mistake – at least in the eyes of Buckingham Palace. She invited a reporter into the family’s London residence in Bruton Street, Mayfair.
The interview she gave him resulted in the publication of a portrait in words of a young and beautiful titled lady looking forward to her marriage into the royal family. The interview was short on personal detail, disclosed nothing of any great interest and was so guarded and respectful that it bordered on the bland, even anodyne. But such was the strictness of her fiancé’s parents, the young bride-to-be found herself thoroughly ticked off for being willing to even speak to a journalist. She never did it again. Michael Cole, BBC TV Royal Correspondent 1985-88,
Woodbridge, Suffolk.
QUESTION Where does the word ‘barbecue’ come from?
BARBECUE is derived from the Arawak word ‘barbacoa’. The Arawak were a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and the Caribbean.
The first written reference comes from the Historia general y natural de las Indias (1526) by the Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo. He used it while describing a scene along the Panamanian isthmus where natives used the barbacoa, a structure made of a raised framework of sticks to store grains and at other times to cook food.
A particular method of cooking involved slowly smoking and cooking meat on the structure.
The term spread across the Caribbean, where it came to refer to the cooking method rather than to the device.
The word filtered into English in various spellings. The earliest use in English dates to 1661: Edmund Hickeringill’s Jamaica Viewed reported that animals ‘are slain, And their flesh forthwith Barbacu’d.’
Richard McGarry, Leven, Fife.
QUESTION Have there ever been novels written by dictators?
ITALIAN dictator Benito Mussolini used to work for a trade union and, aged 25 in 1909, he helped edit a Socialist newspaper called Il Popolo. One of his tasks was to write the weekly fictional serial, which he did with a story called Claudia Particella, published in English as The Cardinal’s Mistress in 1929.
It was set in the 17th Century, telling the tale of Carl Emanuel Madruzzo (the Cardinal and Archbishop of Trent) and his long-time mistress, Claudia Particella, whose father is the Cardinal’s closest friend.
Madruzzo wants to marry Claudia, but the Vatican forbids this. Eventually, Claudia is poisoned by her enemies and dies, with Madruzzo living out his life in unhappy seclusion.
Mussolini had wanted to kill off Claudia earlier but was over-ruled by the editor as the serial was very popular and helped to increase the newspaper’s circulation. Tim Mickleburgh, Grimsby,
Lincs. SADDAM Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq, wrote four novels. The first of these was called Zabibah And The King, which was published anonymously in 2000. It was set in Medieval Tikrit, Saddam’s birthplace, and was an allegorical tale about a great king (Saddam) and a simple, yet beautiful commoner named Zabibah (the Iraqi people).
Zabibah is married to a cruel husband (the United States) who rapes her. The King promises to wage a battle to avenge her honour and in the fighting Zabibah and her husband are both killed. The date of their deaths? January 17, significant as it was the commencement date, in 1991, of Operation Desert Storm, when the U.S. began bombing Iraq