Among the rare authentic stories of Philip’s childhood is the account of how an insensitive grown-up arrived one day on the beach with toys for all but an invalid child, assumed to be ruled out for playthings. Philip, who was five, went into the house and collected all his personal treasures and presented them to her, the latest acquisition on top. It could have been showing off. It was more probably an early glimpse of character. One of his equerries recently came out with something on this : “What people don’t realise is that he’s immensely kind. No one has a bigger heart, or takes greater pains to conceal it.”

From Philip: An Informal Biography by Basil Boothroyd (1981).

Click here for the best price on Philip and Elizabeth by Giles Brandreth.

An eminent man of letters who was also a radical visited the Palace. He accepted the invitation “in a spirit of mingled curiosity and ribaldry.” The mood survived until the Queen appeared and her guests were presented.

“Suddenly I felt physically ill,” he said. “My legs felt weak, my head swam and my mind went totally blank. ‘So you’re writing about such-and-such, Mr~?’ said the Queen. I had no idea what I was writing about, or even if I was writing a book at all. All I could think of to say was, ‘What a pretty brooch you’re wearing, Ma’am.’ So far as I can recall she was not wearing a brooch at all. Presumably she was used to such imbecility. Anyway she paid no attention to my babbling and in a minute or two I found that I was talking sense again.”

Quoted in Crown and People by Philip Ziegler (1978). Check out the best price.

The duties of John Brown, her manservant following the death of Prince Albert, were chronicled in Longford, Victoria R.I.. Here are a few of them in the Queen’s own words :

“We make it a point to have breakfast every morning of our lives … Brown pushed me (in a hand-carriage) up quite a hill and then ran me down again. He did this several times and we enjoyed it very much. … He then put me in a boat on the lake, and rocked me for about half an hour. It was very exhilarating.”

Diana and John Travolta in the White House

New evidence about the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, is emerging all the time. Today, we have the newly-published views of Camilla, now Duchess of Cornwall, married to the Prince of Wales. Source, Daily Mail :

So what did Camilla really think of Diana at the height of her affair with Prince Charles?

“She felt nothing but contempt for her,” according to a trusted Royal aide. “She used to refer to her as ‘that mad cow’.”

Some will see this as a shocking insight indicating a broad streak of self-serving ruthlessness. They may be surprised to learn that in Camilla’s eyes she herself was the one deserving of sympathy, not Diana, for having to pick up the pieces of Charles’s broken life and prop him up sufficiently to restore his confidence.

“She blamed Diana for everything,” says the aide. “She hated what Diana was doing to Charles and blamed her entirely for how low the Prince was when he came to Camilla for comfort.”

Camilla’s scornful attitude towards Diana, we can reveal, did not end there. Far from being jealous of the Priness’s cover-girl looks, among her close circle of friends Camilla was openly mocking of how Diana had gone from being “scrawny” to “muscley”.

Not surprisingly, in Camilla’s eyes the so-called War of the Waleses was a very one-sided affair. To her Diana was “unreasonable” and it was the Princess’s obsessive behaviour that so damaged Charles that he had to look outside his marriage for comfort.