CRAIG BROWN: The prince, the poet and a contact of Paddington

It always happens: just after I’ve finished writing a book, and it is about to be published, I hear something new that I should have included.

My latest book – A Voyage Around the Queen – comes out next week.

It covers a wide variety of aspects of Queen Elizabeth II: the dreams people had about her, her love of corgis, horses and jigsaws, her strange capacity to prompt those she met to spout gibberish, and her meetings with everyone from Putin and Trump to Phil Collins and Daphne du Maurier.

A chapter on Prince Philip focuses on a particular question: when he made a blunt remark to strangers was he being boorish or friendly?

Was he trying to jump-start a conversation by saying something punchy, in the hope of getting something punchy in return, as his supporters claim, or was he just being rude?

For example, on a visit to Paris in 1957, as he and the Queen were welcomed by cheering crowds, he turned to the French minister of the interior and said, ‘Wasn’t it too bad you sent your royal family to the guillotine?’

In his memoir, Tony Blair recalls Prince Philip going up to a Labour MP at a Buckingham Palace reception in 1997. 

Hello,’ he said, ‘where do you represent?’ ‘Stoke,’ she said. ‘Ghastly place, isn’t it?’ he replied.

Such remarks were usually called ‘gaffes’ by the Press.

But many of his friends maintain he was simply trying to break the ice, so the person he was talking to might feel free to reply with something equally jaunty.

In his excellent joint biography of the Queen and Prince Philip, Gyles Brandreth maintains that while the Queen was often awkward at small talk, Philip could always be relied upon to keep the party going.

‘His reputation for curmudgeonliness comes about because… he is deliberately challenging.

He questions, he argues, he plays devil’s advocate… He does it to show an interest and… to maintain his own interest.’

By chance, last week I bought a delightful new book, the Collected Poems of Roger McGough, a treasure chest of the 85-year- old’s work from 1959 to the present.

It’s full of wonderful poems, many moving, many comical, most of them both. McGough is a particular master of the short verse, for instance:

‘When you’re

depressed

deep rest

is best.’

Or this, called Ice while it lasted:

‘Snowman in a field

listening to the raindrops

wishing him farewell.’

One or two poems chronicle encounters with the famous, such as Bob Dylan at the Blue Angel club in Liverpool in 1965, or the Gallagher brothers, who collared him outside a pub and wanted to talk about the Beatles, or Jimi Hendrix, ‘a shy, modest young man’ who, it turns out, played guitar on McGough’s first album in 1968.

He includes a handful of previously unpublished poems, one of which has the alluring title, Reciting Poetry to Prince Philip.

In it, he recalls the Queen’s 80th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in 2006.

McGough is first introduced to the Queen, who just says, ‘Very good’ before moving along the line to chat with Michael Bond, creator of Paddington.

Prince Philip comes next, hands behind his back, and asks McGough, ‘What are you working on at the moment?’

McGough replies that he has just written verse for a TV documentary about the foetus in the womb.

He tells Philip that he can remember one of them, called The Foetus Dreams. He then closes his eyes and recites this beautiful poem:

‘What do I dream of? I dream my mother’s dreams

I dream of being held as I breathe her breath

Of holding her as I dance to her heartbeat

I dream about our future what it might bring

I hear my mother crying I hear her sing.’

As he finishes reciting, McGough opens his eyes, only to see ‘His Royal Highness…looking at me as if I were deranged.

‘”Sorry I bloody asked,” he grunted, before moving quickly along the line.’