Quotessence
Home / Authors / Tina Brown Books
Tina Brown

Tina Brown Books

Journalist

Related Quotes

“Prince Philip’s study in his private quarters at Wood Farm, the house on the Sandringham Estate where he spent much of his retirement years, was as minimal and uncluttered as the boardroom of a ship. His was always the leanest operation of the Palace machine, deploying only two private secretaries, an equerry, and a librarian to execute several hundred royal engagements a year. Despite his peremptory manner, he was by far the most popular member of the family to work for—“very unassuming and knows that it is not always as easy to do something as it is to ask for it be done,” as one household servant put it. In 2008, he gave his Savile Row tailor (John Kent of Norton & Sons) a fifty-one-year-old pair of trousers to be altered.”

Royal FamilyPrince Phillip
Book:The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil
Create image

“If the Sussexes had any residual misgivings about whether they wanted out, those doubts vanished when they viewed the Queen’s 2019 televised Christmas message. With their own eyes, they saw that they had been kicked to the margins of the monarchy. Her Majesty eloquently made the point in her speech by saying nothing. The subtext was all in the flotilla of carefully arranged family photographs positioned on her writing desk, a grouping that, in case anyone thinks is accidental, has been artfully changed every year since the monarch’s first televised seasonal message in 1957. The previous Christmas, a family portrait of Charles, Camilla, the five Cambridges, and Harry and Meghan was exhibited at Her Majesty’s elbow. But in December 2019, the Sussexes had evaporated, their image excised as skillfully as Stalin would have done to an apparatchik out of favor. According to author Christopher Andersen, the Queen told the director of the broadcast that all the displayed photographs were fine to remain in the shot except for one. Her Majesty pointed at a winsome portrait of Harry, Meghan, and baby Archie. “ That one,” said the Queen. “I suppose we don’t need that one.” And a happy Christmas to you too, Granny! William was said to have been appalled when he saw the Sussexes had been edited out. He knew his brother well enough to predict a Category 5 tantrum brewing.”

Prince HarryElizabeth IiMeghan MarklePrince William
Book:The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil
Create image