Was the Queen Mother ever really funny?
Was the Queen Mother ever really funny? She was clearly extremely good company: an attentive listener, full of enthusiasm and affection, right up until her death, aged 101, in 2002. She was also the ideal queen for an unconfident George VI, undermined by his stutter and caught unawares by his accession to the throne, thanks to the abdication of his appallingly selfish brother, Edward VIII. The only time I ever saw the Queen Mother — when she was eighty, at her Clarence House home — I was only eight, but I remember her clearly. A tiny figure, she beamed away, spreading goodwill among strangers when so many people that age have lost mobility, let alone the ability to cheer up other people. Grumpy George V had thought much the same of her charm nearly sixty years earlier.
