![]() Having networked himself into a position in which he was able to spend a fair bit of time with the late Queen, he spent hours peppering her with questions on a topic in which she had seemingly minimal interest: herself. ![]() The Duchess of Sussex “quite liked” cosy Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace, until she was invited “for dinner with William and Catherine and the scale and grandeur of the Cambridge residence”.īrandreth’s other great advantage, apart from his way with loose-lipped ladies-in-waiting and porous pages, is his tenacity. The marriage of the Princess Royal and Vice-Admiral Laurence has, after many “rifts and separations”, “once again begun to thrive … with the advent of grandchildren”. The book overflows with nuggets of insider knowledge. ![]() ![]() “None of them is guilty of betraying any confidences,” he writes dutifully in his introduction, but the gossipy gallop through the Queen’s 96 years that follows shows that plenty of them are happy to sing like canaries about anything they haven’t been sworn to secrecy over. He is supremely well-connected – he mentions here that the Queen Consort regularly attends his annual parties marking Oscar Wilde’s birthday, at one of which he was pleased to introduce her to the celebrity drag queen Baga Chipz – and is a born charmer, able to coax indiscretions out of the courtiers and other Royal hangers-on he has met. Gyles Brandreth is perhaps uniquely well-qualified to write this “intimate portrait” of the late Queen. ![]()
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