The Wicked Wit
4 total works
A beautiful collection celebrating the Queen’s humour, with amusing quotations and stories about royal life.
When thinking of the Queen, our first image is one of dignity and authority. She is the very definition of majesty: the British monarch, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the head of the Commonwealth. But as anyone who knows her will tell you, in person she has a wicked sense of humour:
* Occasionally unintentional (when meeting guitar legend Eric Clapton she enquired 'Have you been playing a long time?')
* Sometimes cannily astute ('I have to be seen to be believed')
* At times downright silly (nicely demonstrated when staff at Balmoral discovered the Queen jumping up and down with glee exclaiming 'I've won, I've won!' after hearing that England had beaten Australia in the cricket)
… the Queen’s sense of humour is like no other.
Revealing a side of the Queen's personality that the public rarely see, this joyous book is a timely celebration of royal humour as Elizabeth II succeeds Victoria as Britain's longest-serving monarch.
His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, OM, GBE was at the forefront of British public life since he married Princess Elizabeth in 1947.
In the seventy years since, his wit (and the occasional ‘gaffe’) continued to endear him to the nation, as he travelled the world taking his unique and charmingly British sense of humour to its far-flung corners. Hailed as a god by a tribe in Vanuatu, the Prince had his fair share of brickbats from the media nearer home, but his outspokenness never failed to raise laughs – and eyebrows.
From notorious one-liners to less newsworthy witticisms and from plain speaking to blunt indifference, the Prince did what we all wish we could do now and again – forget polite conversation and say what he thought.
Celebrate the rapier-like wit of the royal rebel, the late, great Princess Margaret – or ‘Ducky’ as she was known behind closed doors.
Even as a child, Princess Margaret – younger sister of Elizabeth – was noted for her theatrical and witty demeanour. Her nanny, 'Crawfie’ described her as a ‘born comic’ and her sister, now Queen Elizabeth II, remarked that parties were always better with Margaret in attendance as she made everyone laugh. She made John Lennon blush and Pablo Picasso was infatuated with her – and she made no secret of her intolerance for the dim-witted, the disobedient or the boring – and her one-liners are legendary:
On considering that Elizabeth would one day be Queen, Margaret’s response was one of sincere commiseration, ‘Poor you’, she told her.
Attending a high-society party in New York, the hostess asked politely how was the Queen? ‘Which one?’ Margaret replied coolly, ‘My sister, my mother, or my husband?’
The Wicked Wit of the Royal Family celebrates the flashes of fun and brilliance of the most famous family in the world.
There is no doubt that the British royal family is THE most famous family in the world. Watched and picked over in the media for everything from fashion choices to baby bumps, sporting achievements to nightclub preferences, there doesn’t seem to be a moment when they can escape public scrutiny. But, somehow, they still manage to maintain a sense of humour – and it’s those flashes of fun and brilliance that this book celebrates.
From Prince Philip’s gaffe-prone remarks (most of which appear ON camera rather than off) to the ‘in’ jokes shared by the knowing smiles of the younger royals and the Queen’s wickedly dry and often bitingly funny remarks; from Prince Charles’s asides to the Duchess of Cornwall to the self-deprecating smile of the Duchess of Cambridge and the belly laughs that appeal to Prince Harry. This book presents the other side of royal protocol and perhaps gives a glimpse of the real lives of this much-loved clan.