An “idiot” Prime Minister and the appeal of “four-legged dictators”

Last weekend I got up extra early to watch the BBC's coverage of the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in London via a subscription service on my laptop. This year it fell on November 10, exactly five years to the day since we last saw Queen Elizabeth II at full service at the Cenotaph. This event will always be remembered as the one during which the stoic monarch wiped away a tear during the solemn event. (The 2020 service was significantly reduced size due to pandemic precautions, while the Queen missed the 2021 version due to illness.)

We were all so used to seeing Elizabeth II at such important events over the past decades that even though this was the third such ceremony during the reign of King Charles III, I was still surprised not to not see the late Queen leading the royal family in laying wreaths at the Cenotaph.

And this memory made me think of the recent revelations about the Queen and Boris Johnson. One of Britain's leading political writers, Tim Shipman, a new book, Outabout Brexit and the loss of the Conservative Party, which contains scathing sections on former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his relationships with the Queen, other members of the royal family and palace officials. In particular, Elizabeth II is as acerbic as she is circumspect.

In September 2022, Johnson and his successor, Liz Truss, flew to Balmoral Castle so that Johnson could resign and the Queen could appoint Truss as Prime Minister. At that time, Shipman writes, the queen was enjoying the final days of her life with a gathering of relatives and valued staff. When Boris Johnson's name was mentioned, the Queen mischievously said: “At least I won't let that idiot have my funeral now.”

Concern over Johnson extended beyond royal circles. Can the Queen sack a Prime Minister? asked one of his advisers after the Prime Minister persuaded the Queen to prorogue Parliament in 2019 in a bid to thwart anti-Brexit forces in Parliament. The way he acted was called by critics the greatest act of constitutional vandalism since Charles I and was the subject of a successful legal challenge. (FYI: the answer is technically yes, the Queen can sack a Prime Minister.)

The reaction to these stories, the surprise that the Queen had expressed sardonic views about her outgoing Prime Minister and had a rather cheeky sense of humor, then made me think of the new biography of Elizabeth II, Q: A journey around the Queen by Craig Brown. (My opinion to Zoom is here.)

I wanted it to be as much about the Queen as it was about her effect on the rest of the world and the way she inhabited people's minds, the way people dreamed of her, the way they reacted to her funeral, Brown told me in an interview in October. The result is an intelligent and insightful look at the world's most famous yet enigmatic woman:

Perhaps she was less a painting than a mirror. With her inner world hidden from public view and her conversation limited by protocol to questions and not answers, she became a human mirror: the light cast by celebrity bounced off her and back onto those she faced. To the optimist, she seemed optimistic; to the pessimist, a pessimist. To the insider it seemed intimate, to the outsider distant; to the cynical, prosaic and the amazed, charismatic.

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What makes Q What makes the biography so good is the way Brown weaves together vignettes and thoughts in a way that allows readers to draw their own conclusions about the monarch:

When Eddie Mirzoeff, the producer and director of the BBC documentary Elizabeth R.visited Sandringham in 1990, he found her poring over a 2,000-piece puzzle.

It seems terribly difficult, he said.

It's much more difficult than the one we did yesterday, was the response. Puzzles appeal to those who like to bring order to chaos. Corgis offer the opposite. They are puzzle pieces gone wrong: puzzle pieces with legs. In such a planned and regimented life, a life dictated by order, convention, duty and dignity, was it the randomness of her corgis that appealed to the queen so much? They offered him no respect, no fear, and only the slightest obedience. They were random, aggressive, demanding and carefree. They barked when they should have stayed quiet, ran around when they should have stayed still, and attacked anyone within reach, regardless of their status. They were four-legged dictators, drunken toddlers, raging thugs. They knew nothing of deference or dignity. Yet their lack of language, or at least intelligible language, ensured their discretion: no royal corgi has ever published their memoirs or poured out their hearts to Oprah Winfrey.

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If there's a recurring theme in this unusual biography, it's how even the most powerful and famous people on the planet would turn into pieces of quivering jelly in his presence, losing the ability to think or act. speak clearly.

At a reception at the Palace for the British music industry, the Queen had just finished exchanging a few words with radio presenter Terry Wogan and rock star Phil Collins. Perhaps out of a sense of relief that his ordeal was over, Collins began whistling the theme music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The queen heard it, turned around and smiled. What was that? she asked. Collins was stunned, so Wogan tried to help him. He was calling ET, ma'am, he replied (even though I said it wanting to keep my mouth shut).

Ah, said the queen, and continued on her way.

Collins turned to Wogan. Why did I do this? he said. What happened to me?

The royal effect, Wogan said. You say the first thing that comes to mind, and you take the memory of your stupidity with you to the grave.

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My last appearance on Global TVs The morning show November 11:

My last article to Zoom: Cooking & the Crown: Inside Tom Parker Bowles' New Cookbook, Plus 4 Royal Recipes

You might be surprised by how simple many recipes are, Parker Bowles explains in his book. Indeed, his first breakfast option is the porridge that his mother, Queen Camilla, eats every day in winter accompanied by a teaspoon of honey from the royal hives. Food is the great leveler. I want to strip away the pomp and circumstance and get straight to the point with a collection of wonderful recipes that you actually want to cook from over two centuries of royal cuisine.

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