CRAIG BROWN: The prince, the poet and a touch of Paddington By Craig Brown for the Daily Mail Published: 01:14, 22 August 2024 | Updated: 01:22, 22 August 2024 e-mail View comments 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? The late Queen pictured at Balmoral Castle with one of her corgis A chapter in Brown's new book A Voyage Around the Queen focuses on Prince Philip (pictured) and one particular question: when he made a blunt remark to strangers was he being boorish or friendly? 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.