EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: The late Queen’s cartoon collection seems to have been sent to the Royal Archives, never to be seen again
An extensive assortment of cartoons avidly collected by the late Queen seems to have been relegated to the Royal Archives, unlikely to be seen again.
Her Majesty’s sense of humour was tickled by such images, including a number by my colleague Mac, Stan McMurtry, which were lovingly amassed in large leather scrapbooks.
But a suggestion that they pass to the Royal Collection to be catalogued and preserved for the nation has not been acted on. Instead, they are to be hidden away at Windsor. Like Queen Victoria, is the new King not amused?
Her Majesty’s sense of humour was tickled by such images, including a number by my colleague Mac, Stan McMurtry, which were lovingly amassed in large leather scrapbooks
Taking pride of place at Charles’s Scottish coronation, clutching their bows, were the Royal Company of Archers. Members used to take part in ‘shooting the goose eye’, where a live bird was encased in clods of turf with just its head exposed and the first archer to shoot it through the eye got to take it home for supper.
Fortuitously for Caledonian geese, Charles’ Scottish bodyguards are no longer required to have any skill with bows and arrows.
Meanwhile Bill Clinton, visiting Oxford, dropped into his favourite pub the Lamb And Flag after his US security team checked it out.
One hazard they didn’t have to worry about was flying darts.
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe author CS Lewis and his chum, Hobbit creator JRR Tolkien, took their custom to the Lamb And Flag after the landlady of their local, the Eagle And Child pub across the road, installed a new-fangled dartboard some 60 years ago.
So last Thursday, Clinton could sip his pint, safe from English archers.
Turning a sprightly 83 today, health obsessive Sir Ringo Starr announces he permits himself just one bite of birthday cake. ‘In Liverpool, you have to have a piece of the cake,’ he says.
‘I have a forkful, and that’s because I have to do it. It’s tradition. I’m trying to be totally sugar-free, but that’s impossible.’
These days teetotal, LA-based Ringo was less concerned about sugar consumption when he used to knock back up to 16 bottles of wine a day.
Turning a sprightly 83 today, health obsessive Sir Ringo Starr (pictured) announces he permits himself just one bite of birthday cake. ‘In Liverpool, you have to have a piece of the cake,’ he says
Currently on a stage tour of Asia, John Cleese crassly compares his first class British Airways seats to the conditions endured by US prisoners of war in Vietnam.
‘They used to put them in little bamboo cages so they couldn’t get comfortable no matter how they sat,’ the old booby spouts.
‘I think they’re the same people who design seats for British Airways.’
Sasha Swire, describing an evening in Colchester city centre for the New Statesman, compares it to rewilding, Essex-style, writing: ‘Heavily tattooed men rampaging like wolves, their tongues hanging out, occasionally sniffing their crotches; women trotting off in the highest of heels in deer-like groups, fluttering false eyelashes as dense as forests… for a member of the chattering classes it’s like watching a BBC wildlife documentary.’
After embarrassing David Cameron by describing his flirting in her diary hasn’t this lethal Mrs Pepys now managed to insult the youth of an entire city?
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