#Alan Lascelles

[george-the-good]

The King said to me rather bitterly this morning that Winston had come back from his Italian holiday looking a new man, and that while Ministers out of office always got such opportunities for recuperation, he never did. To that, I am afraid, the only possible answer is on the lines of il faut souffrir pour étre belle. It is a melancholy but inescapable fact that the Pope of Rome and the King of England are almost the only two human beings who can never expect a complete holiday until they reach the grave. Even the King’s private secretary can count on being allowed to go into honourable retirement some day.

- George VI’s Private Secretary, Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles, diary entry, 26 October 1945 (King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War - The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles)

[royal-confessions]

“I think Princess Margaret would have been successful in marrying Peter Townsend if she had just waited for Tommy Lascelles to retire. Lascelles was in a bad place since his only son (John Lascelles) and his best friend ("Bunt" Goschen) had very recently died from cancer. He and his wife had been responsible for the care of both men and Goschen's wife Vivienne who also had cancer. Tommy's mother and favourite sister also died from the same cancer that killed his son so no doubt he blamed himself. But then I suppose if she did wait she would have had to contend with the death of Rosie Adeane. I think a lot of media paints Margaret as the victim and Lascelles especially but also Adeane as the villains when in fact their were all complex individuals who were suffering, but, I would argue, the former more so than the latter. Nothing compares to the loss of a child.” - Submitted by Anonymous

[world-of-wales]

Can you explain the Queen Mother and Princess of Wales with the two gentlemen post please?

Yah sure sweetie, the man in the first b&w pic is Tommy Lascelles (his actual name was alan).

He was a private secretary for George vi, then qeii. One of the first people to smell Edward viii's BS from miles away. He was a very big player at the palace and very instrumental when it came to tough decisions. He was also one of Queen mum's most trusted people. Her right hand man basically, she depended a lot on his advice. You can say she had a lot of her 'devious' work done by him bts. If she wanted something done then Tommy was the guy to make it happen.

And the second pic beneath him is of Jean Christophe Gray, will's private secretary who came up with the 'recollections may vary' line which Catalina pushed for to be added into the statement.

So the post is actually comparing the relationships between the two pairs and how JCG and Cat working together to get shit done in the monarchy is similar to Tommy and the Queen Mum scheming together to make sure there is a monarchy.

[goodoldroyalty]

I had a long talk with the Queen, primarily to ask her opinion on Henry Moore's Madonna' at Northampton, of which Bric Maclagan has sent me some photographs. She agrees with me and with Owen Morshead - that Moore, who is only forty-six, can well be put in cold storage for a bit. When I showed these photographs to the King, his only comment was: The child is hydrocephalic, and the mother has got housemaid s knee.

-King's Counsellor (Sir. Alan Lascelles)

[philibetexcerpts]

“Prince Philip was not at his wife’s bedside at the birth. It was not common practice in the 1940s for fathers to be present during the delivery of a baby. Instead, he got so restless pacing up and down an equerry’s room waiting for news that his private secretary, Mike Parker, took him off for a game of squash on the palace court. Sir Alan Lascelles gave Philip the good news. He was ecstatic and ran to the Buhl Room, and held his firstborn son in his arms, still wearing the sporting flannels and open-neck shirt he had been wearing on the squash court. Philip declared to his wife and those in the room that his newborn son looked just like a ‘plum pudding’.”

Prince Philip’s Century 1921-2021: The Extraordinary Life Of The Duke Of Edinburgh by Robert Jobson

[calciopics]

Premier League then and now

1992 Team

Back row: David Hirst, Sheffield Wednesday, Lee Sharpe, Manchester United, Tony Daley, Aston Villa, Vinnie Jones, Chelsea, Mark Wright, Liverpool, John Wark, Ipswich Town, Tim Flowers, Southampton, Tim Sherwood, Blackburn Rovers. Middle row: Ian Brightwell, Manchester City, Ian Butterworth, Norwich City, Hans Segers, Wimbledon, Lee Hurst, Coventry City, Carl Bradshaw, Sheffield United, Gordon Durie, Tottenham Hotspur, David Hillier, Arsenal. Front row: Gary Charles, Nottingham Forest, Andy Ritchie, Oldham Athletic, John Salako, Crystal Palace, Andy Sinton, QPR, Alan Kernaghan, Middlesbrough, Gordon Strachan, Leeds United, Peter Beardsley, Everton

2022 Team 

Back row: Troy Deeney, Watford, Billy Sharp, Sheffield United, Hamza Choudhury, Leicester City, Jordan Pickford, Everton, Ahmed Elmohamady, Aston Villa, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Chelsea, Felipe Anderson, West Ham United, Mathew Ryan, Brighton & Hove Albion. Middle row: James Tarkowski, Burnley, Willy Boly, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Junior Stanislas, Bournemouth, Marcus Rashford, Manchester United, Raheem Sterling, Manchester City,  Jamal Lewis, Norwich City. Front row: Jamaal Lascelles,  Newcastle United, Nathan Redmond, Southampton, Son Heung-min, Tottenham Hotspur, Luka Milivojevic, Crystal Palace, Mohamed Salah, Liverpool, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Arsenal.

[darlenefblog]

Prince Alastair, 2nd Duke of Connaught, Earl of Sussex

Such an interesting story & gossip that went around. Wikipedia can be a great source of info on these old titles and long dead folk.

Alastair Arthur Windsor, 2nd Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (9 August 1914 – 26 April 1943) was a member of the British Royal Family. He was the only child of Prince Arthur of Connaught and Princess Alexandra, 2nd Duchess of Fife. He was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria through his father and a great-grandson of Edward VII through his mother.

In 1942, he became the second Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex when he inherited his grandfather's title.. The Earl of Sussex title is now extinct.

He was assigned to Ottawa as aide-de-camp to his kinsman the Earl of Athlone, then Governor General of Canada. The Duke died in 1943 at the age of 28 "on active service" in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in unusual circumstances. Newspapers at the time reported that he died of "natural causes.  Another report was that the Duke "was found dead on the floor of his room at Rideau Hall on the morning of 26 April 1943. He had died, apparently, from hypothermia." The diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, King George VI's private secretary, published in 2006, recorded that both the regiment and Athlone had rejected him as incompetent, and he fell out of a window when drunk and perished of hypothermia overnight.

The current accepted account of the Duke's death seems to be falling out a window too drunk to get up & froze. What a way to go, drunk off your ass & frozen.

[themerrycourtier]

Tommy Lascelles’ daughter’s wedding

Found this little gem today... King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were in attendance, and there are excellent closeups of Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone!

-- Tommy Lascelles couldn’t even fucking smile walking his daughter into St. George’s Chapel. Says a lot. 

[george-the-good]

There were fourteen for lunch and I sat next to the King – for the first time in a large lunch. We got on v. well after a bit and talked a lot – I was thrilled. On my left was Sir Alan Lascelles, who asked me if I kept a diary and remarked how interested I’d be to read in my great-grandmother’s diary that she sat next to William IV or something, which I knew applied to myself at the present moment and which idea is also always in my mind.

- Alathea Fitzalan Howard diary entry, November 1, 1941 (The Windsor Diaries)

---

Alathea Fitzalan Howard (1923-2001) was the daughter of the second Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent. During the war she lived at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park and spent much time with the Royal Family, especially Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

[royal-confessions]

“I can't help but notice how Tommy Lascelles has a sort of second father, subtly paternal attitude towards Queen Elizabeth, the proud dad way he smiles at her "Yes, that's my girl!". When she kinda annoys him, he's like "young lady, please... 🙄" LOL. Tbh he just seems like a pragmatic, reserved man rather than cold, unkind or unemotional. I bet he's a big softie when no one looks haha, I so wish we had seen him with his wife and children.” - Submitted by Anonymous

[fuckyeahhistorycrushes]

Sir Alan "Tommy" Lascelles (1887-1981) was a British courtier and diarist.

He worked for the British royal family for twenty-seven years, and was the private secretary of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II.

He was portrayed by actor Pip Torrens in Netflix's The Crown.

[killerscartv]

The Scold's Bridle (Full TV Miniseries) 1998

Mathilda Gillespie, an eccentric recluse known for her incredible meanness of nature, is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slashed and her head locked inside a so-called 'scold's bridle', a rusted cage built with tongue clamps which was used as a torture device throughout the middle ages. The dead woman's only friend, Dr. Sarah Blakeney, becomes the prime suspect in her murder after police discover that she's been left a great deal of money in the will. To clear her name, Sarah delves deep into Mathilda's mysterious past, and subsequently unravels an intricate web of greed, abuse and depravity. Adapted for television by the BBC. It was directed by David Thacker from a screenplay written by Tony Bicât; producer Chris Parr, editor St John O'Rorke, music Junior Campbell. the cast included: Miranda Richardson as Dr. Sarah Blakeney Bob Peck as Detective Sergeant Cooper Douglas Hodge as Jack Blakeney Siân Phillips as Mathilda Gillespie Trudie Styler as Joanna Lascelles Paul Brooke as Duncan Orloff Virginia McKenna as Violet Orloff Beth Winslet as Ruth Lascelles Rosie Wiggins as Young Mathilda Gillespie John Duval as Sir William Cavendish Christine Moore as Jenny Spede Randal Herley as Dr. Cameron Nick Malinowski as Young Detective Constable Alan Williams as Bob Spede Rosemary Martin as Jane Merryman Tenniel Evans as Paul Merryman Oona Beeson as Polly Graham Miles Anderson as Detective Inspector Harmer Alan MacNaughtan as James Gillespie Hugh Bonneville as Tim Duggan

[statedsoftly]

fergus is dyslexic. 

he struggles with the written word and while his sibling has full fluency of a plethora of languages - fergus mastery is with common. 

he is not shy with that fact, he can speak orleasian fairly well, due to years of war and trade, learning the language from his father’s knee. 

he is not shy with the fact that he struggles with written word, for his private secretary ( think alan lascelles ) is there to aid with writing or interpretation if required. his son did not struggle the same way he did, however fergus would have made accommodations if they were needed. 

[royalpain16]

The Duke of Windsor was the king who never came home

A NEWLY revealed letter makes clear the Duke of Windsor’s bitterness over his exile after abdicating to marry Mrs Simpson.

The Duke of Windsor’s words make fascinating reading in hindsight. He had taken umbrage at an article in the Sunday Express claiming his exile in France was self-imposed.

Not a bit of it, he insisted in a letter to the paper’s owner Lord Beaverbrook. He was staying abroad against his own wishes.

He implied he was protecting his mother Queen Mary and his sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth - and thus the reputation of the monarchy itself - from the public criticism they would incur if they snubbed his twice-divorced American wife, the former Wallis Simpson.

But he stressed he was far from happy with the arrangement and he wasn’t prepared to abide by it for much longer.

“In accordance with the policy of playing my brother’s game, I have agreed to another postponement, but, believe me, for the last time,” he wrote in the letter of March 1939, which was sold for £15,000 at auction yesterday.

In fact the Duke was to stay away for the rest of his life, to the huge relief of a political establishment that had considered him unsuitable to be King well before the crisis over his choice of wife.

As far as the British public was concerned Edward VIII gave up the throne in 1936 because he was in love with a woman whom he could not marry while remaining monarch. 

It was true that Wallis’ previous marriages presented a constitutional problem - a divorcee could not enter the Royal Enclosure at Ascot let alone become Queen - but it is now accepted by historians that there were much larger issues at stake.

Initially the problem was his temperament. 

As the dashing Prince of Wales he had toured the Empire with immense success, bringing the kind of star quality to the monarchy matched only by Princess Diana half a century later. 

Behind the scenes, however, he was a worry - delighting in affairs with married women and capable of great callousness. 

One of his private secretaries Alan Lascelles confided to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he sometimes thought it would be best for the country if Edward fell off his point-to-point horse and broke his neck. 

“God forgive me,” replied Baldwin, “so do I.”

By the mid-Thirties the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany presented a far bigger headache for those worrying about the Prince’s suitability to replace his father. 

With German ancestry via his mother (the former Princess Mary of Teck), his great-grandfather Prince Albert as well as Queen Victoria’s own Hanoverian forebears he was a noted Germanophile who was so comfortable in the German language that he sometimes referred to it as his mother tongue.

When his father George V died in January 1936 Edward started meddling in government policy. 

He took to calling the German ambassador directly - a clear breach of constitutional protocol. 

When Hitler made it clear he meant to send his forces back into the demilitarised Rhineland, the British government expressed opposition and Edward should have stepped back. 

Instead he threatened to abdicate if Hitler’s advance was stopped, even phoning the German ambassador to tell him he had done so. 

In that context the crisis over the King’s insistence on marrying Mrs Simpson came as a godsend.

We now know that Edward attempted to go over the heads of his ministers and appeal directly to the people of Britain and the Empire to allow him to remain on the throne and marry Wallis. 

Baldwin refused permission for the speech, saying it would be a breach of constitutional principle. 

He also exaggerated the scale of popular opposition to Mrs Simpson in order to force the King’s hand.

Once off the throne the Duke of Windsor still posed a problem. A recently released FBI file showed that at a party in Vienna in July 1937 - the month he married Mrs Simpson - the Duke told an Italian diplomat that the Americans had cracked Italy’s intelligence codes.

Four months later he and the Duchess paid a high-profile visit to Germany where the Nazi regime fawned on Edward. 

Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels wrote: “It’s a shame he is no longer King. With him we would have entered into an alliance.”

When war broke out he was made a major-general in France but he continued to communicate with the enemy. 

In January 1940 the German minister in The Hague wrote that he had established a direct line of contact to the Duke. 

From him the Germans learned that their plans for the invasion of France had fallen into Allied hands. 

This intelligence allowed Hitler to change his plans. France duly fell.

Six months later the German ambassador in Lisbon sent a message to Berlin saying: “The Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing would make England ready for peace." 

Thus the former King was urging the bombardment of his own people.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill understood the danger he posed and was desperate to get Edward back to Britain, at one stage threatening him with court martial if he refused. 

In the end he kept him out of harm’s way by making him governor of the Bahamas - a humiliating posting which both the Duke and Duchess detested.

From there, the Duke sent a message to President Roosevelt saying that if the US leader sued for peace with Hitler, he would immediately issue a statement of support. Luckily it never happened.

After the war the Windsors accepted an invitation from France to settle tax-free in Paris. Diana Mosley, wife of the British fascist leader Sir Oswald, was a frequent visitor. 

Other guests included Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich, Cecil Beaton and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. 

Although the Duke had dropped his hopes of returning to live in Britain the couple did pay occasional visits. 

Edward attended his brother George VI’s funeral in 1952, and the Duke and Duchess visited London in 1965 when they met the Queen and attended the funeral of Edward’s sister the Princess Royal. 

The last royal ceremony the Duke attended was the funeral of his sister-in-law Princess Marina in 1968.

He died in Paris in 1972 and his body was returned to Britain where he was given a full royal funeral. 

The Duchess died 14 years later and was buried alongside him in the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore, Windsor. 

They are best remembered now as star-crossed lovers who fell victim of snobbery and prejudice and gave up the privileges of monarchy to be together. There’s some truth in that. 

But it’s only a small part of the story of the Nazi-sympathising monarch who compromised Britain’s war effort at a time of national peril and whose treachery it has suited everyone to write out of history. - Express Sept. 5, 2013

Got curious about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor after posting a little about The Duchess’ jewelry that was the 2nd highest auction for Sotheby’s at over $50 million.

[actualitefootball]

Football Actualité : Un fan de Newcastle qui s’est effondré « fait de grands progrès »

Alan George Smith s’est effondré lors d’un match à Newcastle

La famille d’un fan de Newcastle qui s’est effondré lors du match de l’équipe de Premier League contre Tottenham dimanche dit qu’il « fait de grands progrès ».

Le jeu a été suspendu car Alan George Smith, 80 ans, a reçu une RCR et a ensuite été transporté à l’hôpital.

Les joueurs de Tottenham Eric Dier et Sergio Reguilon ont été félicités pour avoir alerté les médecins et les officiels.

« Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer qu’Alan fait de grands progrès », a déclaré Paul, le fils de M. Smith.

« [He] est maintenant pleinement alerte et est debout et se promène. Il restera à l’hôpital au cours des prochains jours pendant que d’autres tests sont effectués. Lui et notre famille aimeraient remercier son ami, Don Williamson, qui était avec lui à ce moment-là et a alerté tout le monde de son état.

« Nous voudrions également remercier et rendre hommage aux médecins et aux infirmières qui ont administré la RCR, aux ambulanciers paramédicaux du service d’ambulance du Nord-Est, à l’Ambulance Saint-Jean, aux fans et aux stewards sur les lieux, ainsi qu’au personnel médical du RVI et de l’hôpital Freeman. Nous serons toujours reconnaissants.

« Nous voudrions également remercier toutes les personnes qui ont souhaité bonne chance à Alan sur les réseaux sociaux, ainsi qu’aux joueurs et au personnel de Newcastle United et de Tottenham Hotspur, en particulier Jamaal Lascelles qui a envoyé un message personnel. Cela signifiait tellement pour Alain.

« Il a hâte de retourner à St. James’ Park dès que possible. »

Un fan dans la foule proche de l’incident était le Dr Tom Prichard, qui a parlé de son implication dans BBC Breakfast.

Il a déclaré: « Tout s’est passé si rapidement. J’étais assis dans le Gallowgate End et je pouvais voir qu’il se passait quelque chose. Les fans appelaient des stewards et des secouristes et il y avait une dame qui faisait la RCR sur quelqu’un.

« En tant que médecin A&E, je suis allé offrir un coup de main pour voir comment je pouvais aider. »

Les supporters dans la tribune ont alerté les joueurs de la situation et Reguilon a parlé à l’arbitre Andre Marriner, tandis que Dier a informé les médecins et les a invités avec un défibrillateur.

M. Smith a ensuite été emmené à l’infirmerie Royal Victoria…

Lire la suite : news – OnlyFootball https://ift.tt/2Zaw24U

[zmkccommonplace]

Like a child in the fairy stories who had been given every gift except a soul.

Alan (Tommy) Lascelles on Edward VIIIth, https://unherd.com/2021/08/the-snake-who-saved-the-monarchy/?1628063876875