#elizabeth: an intimate portrait

[grandmaster-anne]

Gyles Brandreth's Exclusive Extract Part 2

The Mail Plus | Published 26 November 2022

WHENEVER the names of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex come up in court circles, courtiers flinch and change the subject or refer to them as ‘persons who live overseas’.

If Harry and Meghan are mentioned to members of the Royal Family, they simply smile briefly and say ‘we wish them all the best’ and nothing else.

As I write this, members of the new King’s communications team are bracing themselves for what may come when Prince Harry publishes his much-talked-about memoir – the ‘accurate and wholly truthful’ account of his life – in January.

‘I’m writing this not as the prince I was born, but as the man I have become,’ said Harry when the book was initially announced. In fact, of course, he was not writing it at all: he was telling his story to a ghost-writer.

Harry’s tell-all memoir, for which he received an advance of $20 million (£16.53 million), was originally promised for the autumn of 2022. It seems he’d been informed his grandmother was quite poorly and decided to pause publication in consequence. Was he worried about adding stress, worry and disappointment to her final months? Possibly.

There is no evidence, however, that the Queen was distressed by her grandson’s decision to go ahead with the book in the first place. She ‘understood’ Harry’s desire to write his book, not only for the money but because he wanted to tell his story – to speak his truth, as Meghan might put it.

He wouldn’t have been the first member of the Royal Family to do so: the Queen remembered ‘the fuss there was’ in 1951 when her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, published his own ghost-written volume of memoirs, A King’s Story. He too had wanted to tell his truth, and he needed the money. The memoir itself has long since been forgotten.

Although the Queen had never read any of the books about the Royal Family, her attitude towards them had changed over the years.

Indiscrete: Marion Crawford with the then-Princess Elizabeth and her sister in 1939

In 1950, when Marion Crawford published an innocuous memoir about her years in the royal household as governess to the then Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret, the Royal Family was utterly appalled.

But by the time ‘Crawfie’ died, aged 78 in 1988, Elizabeth II had forgiven her, though I am not sure Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, ever could.

More recently, the Queen’s dresser Angela Kelly published two books – Dressing The Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe and The Other Side Of The Coin: The Queen, The Dresser And The Wardrobe. And she did so with her royal boss’s full blessing and approval.

As time went by, the Queen was increasingly able to take the long view. She had lived so long that she did sometimes feel that she had ‘seen it all before’.

For example, when the Duke of York (who did himself no favours with his self-justifying interview for Newsnight in 2019) was harrumphing about Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey on American television in 2020, the Queen chipped in gently: ‘Didn’t Sarah do something similar?’

She did. In 2011, the Oprah Winfrey Network in the US aired Finding Sarah, a six-part TV series in which the former Duchess of York shared her tears and her heartache with a TV psychiatrist and the viewing millions.

It was by no means Sarah’s first transgression – those infamous photos of her having her toes sucked by her financial adviser come to mind. Yet the Queen continued to go out of her way to stay in touch with Sarah, even though Prince Philip found his former daughter-law ‘beyond the pale’.

The Queen’s greatest quality,  her husband told me once, was tolerance. ‘She is infinitely tolerant,’ the Duke of Edinburgh said, ‘and forgiving.’

Famously, in 2012, in a historic encounter at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, the Queen shook hands with Martin McGuinness, formerly an Irish Republican Army commander, despite having lost a close relative, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, to an IRA bomb in 1979.

Although she remained instinctively conservative, she was always tolerant of the traditions and beliefs of others and became increasingly accepting of the changing mores she saw around her. In the 1980s, she’d encouraged her then footman Paul Burrell to marry, and offered he and his wife a honeymoon at Balmoral.

The marriage later collapsed, and in 2017 Burrell married his new partner, Graham Cooper.

Discreetly, a few months after the marriage, a wedding present arrived from Her Majesty. ‘The Queen has always been incredibly broad-minded and accepting and generous,’ said Paul.

The Queen believed, too, in the reality of redemption. She looked for the good in people, not the bad.

So what does all this have to do with Harry and his wife, Meghan?

I can tell you, because I know this, that the Queen was always more concerned for Harry’s well-being than about ‘this television nonsense’, meaning both the Oprah Winfrey interview – which caused so much controversy – and the lucrative deal the Sussexes made with Netflix.

Again, her view differed from that of Prince Philip. I know from someone close to him that he thought Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah was ‘madness’  and ‘no good would come of it’.

I also know that the Queen liked Meghan’s mother, and was sorry the Markle family was ‘fractured’. And I know she was anxious  that Harry should ‘find his feet’ in California and ‘find really useful things to do’.

The Queen was devoted to Harry. She loved him, she thought him ‘huge fun’, and she truly wished him well in his new life abroad.

Whenever Harry called his grandmother from Montecito, he was always put through to Her Majesty immediately.

The truth is that when her grandson told her he was marrying Meghan Markle, she was truly delighted by the prospect. She liked Meghan and told lots of people so. And she did everything she could to make her future granddaughter-in-law feel welcome.

She was concerned for her future happiness. At their first meeting, the Queen said to Meghan: ‘You can carry on being an actress if   you like – that’s your profession, after all.’

She would have been totally understanding if Meghan had decided to continue her career. But the former Suits actress was ready for royal duty and, of course, the Queen was delighted by that. She was particularly delighted by the enthusiasm Meghan showed for the Commonwealth and by the commitment she made to do ‘whatever you think we should be doing for the Commonwealth’.

Indeed, Meghan promised that when it came to the Commonwealth, she wouldn’t let Her Majesty down. 

The Queen (who, of course, had seen it all before) understood that Harry’s girl might find adjusting to royal life ‘challenging to begin with’ (as she put it). ‘It is very jolty, but you soon get used to it’ – that was Her Majesty’s experience going back many years.

To help Meghan, the Queen suggested that her daughter-in-law, Sophie Wessex, would be an ideal mentor. ‘Sophie can help show you the ropes,’ said the Queen.

Meghan made it clear that she did not feel she needed Sophie’s help. She had Harry. The Queen was a little concerned at that, and concerned, too, when word reached her that Meghan was reportedly occasionally a bit ‘high-handed’ with staff. The Queen put it down to pre-wedding nerves.

Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018 was warmly welcomed by all and sundry. No great play was made of it, but it was generally reckoned ‘a good thing’ having a mixed-race person joining the Royal Family.

Harry’s father expressed his genuine delight; Harry expressed his dewy-eyed devotion; Meghan announced she would retire from acting and become a British citizen (this may not happen, since you need to be resident in the United Kingdom for three consecutive years before you can apply for citizenship as a spouse).

Less than a month after the wedding, the Queen took Meghan on her first solo outing – to my old constituency, the City of Chester. The date marked the first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the Queen wore a green outfit in memory of the victims of the fire.

Meghan (in cream-coloured Givenchy) looked beautiful – and did her bit, effortlessly and well,  to the manner born. She kept a step behind the Queen without fail, she smiled, she chatted, she coped with her hair in the blustery weather and she admitted she had never been to the North of England before but was ‘loving it already’.

‘Top marks,’ said the Queen, who had chosen this particular day for her new granddaughter-in-law’s induction to royal duty, in part because it was ‘a fairly typical day’, but mainly because the programme included a visit to a theatre – ‘and she is an actress after all’.

The courtiers accompanying the royal party that day included Samantha Cohen, former assistant private secretary to the Queen, who had been persuaded to stay on in royal service to help Meghan as she began her new life as a member of the Family Firm.

Unhappily, as we know, it did not work out. During their short time as working members of the Royal Family, quite a number of staff left the Sussexes’ service, including Cohen and another private secretary, two personal assistants and two nannies. Cohen, after she had left, reportedly said it had been like ‘working for a couple of teenagers’. Others called Meghan ‘an outrageous bully’ and ‘a narcissistic sociopath’. Meghan’s solicitor denied the allegations, saying they were part of a ‘calculated smear campaign’.

The only concern the Queen let slip in the early days of the Sussexes’ marriage was to wonder to a friend if Harry wasn’t ‘perhaps a little over-in-love’. This was as far as she came – to my knowledge at least – to ever uttering a word against the new Duchess of Sussex.

On June 4, 2021, at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in California, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, gave birth to her second child and first daughter and she and her husband, Harry, Duke of Sussex, decided to call their newborn Lilibet Diana – in honour of the Queen, Harry’s grandmother, and his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Lilibet had been King George V’s pet name for his favourite grandchild, based on the way Princess Elizabeth pronounced her name when she first began to talk. It was a very personal nickname: only a tiny handful of people outside the Queen’s immediate family called her Lilibet throughout her life.

According to the Sussexes, Harry sought his grandmother’s permission to use her family nickname as the Christian name for her 11th great-grandchild. The Queen’s recollection was a little different.

According to the Queen, Harry told her the Sussexes wanted to call the baby ‘Lilibet’ in her honour and she accepted their choice with good grace, taking it as the compliment it was intended to be. 

Others in the family found the choice ‘bewildering’ and ‘rather presumptuous’, given that ‘Lilibet’ as a name had always been intimately and exclusively the Queen’s.

Later, the Queen said: ‘I hear they’re calling her “Lili”, which is very pretty and seems just right.’

Now that the Queen is dead, Lili Mountbatten-Windsor is seventh in the line of succession to the British throne – one behind her brother, Archie, and one ahead of her great-uncle, Prince Andrew.

As a male-line great-grandchild of a monarch, she was not a princess during Elizabeth II’s lifetime, but, technically, under a letters patent issued by George V in 1917,  she could be entitled to become a princess now that her grandfather Charles is King.

This is not a likely prospect, however, given that Lili is being brought up in America and the Sussexes have withdrawn from official royal life in the United Kingdom.

The Queen took firm action in January 2020 when Harry and Meghan announced their desire to ‘step back’ from their lives as ‘senior royals’.

They planned to divide their time between the United Kingdom and North America; they wanted financial independence; they hoped to be able to continue to serve Queen and Commonwealth, but on their own terms. It was a naive hope and not to be. The Queen convened a family meeting at Sandringham – attended by Charles, William and Harry – and a way forward was agreed.

Harry and Meghan could do as they pleased, but they could not represent the Queen while doing so. Their HRH titles would be put in abeyance and Harry, to his dismay, was required to give up his royal patronages and military appointments. Harry was distressed, as he put it, ‘that it should come to this’. So was his grandmother.

In a personal statement, she made it clear that Harry and Meghan would always be close members of her family, and she went out of her way to praise her American granddaughter-in-law. But she was equally clear that she wasn’t going to have a couple of freelance royals roaming the world doing their own thing in any sense in her name.

The Duke of Edinburgh was not pleased: he did not believe Harry and Meghan were doing the right thing, either for the country or for themselves. ‘It’s a big mistake to think about yourself,’ he told me, more than once. ‘No one is interested in you in the long run. Don’t court popularity. It doesn’t last. Remember that the attention comes because of the position you are privileged to hold, not because of who you are. If you think it’s all about you, you’ll never be happy.’

Although Prince Philip regretted Harry’s decision, he did not get involved in its aftermath. On the day the Queen held her Sandringham ‘summit’, he made himself scarce, deliberately leaving the main house at Sandringham and retreating to Wood Farm.

‘I’ll soon be out of it,’ he said, ‘and not before time.’

George Harewood, the grandson of Queen Mary and King George V, remembered a family where emotional inhibition was the order of the day. ‘We did not talk of love and affection and what we meant to each other,’ he said, ‘but rather of duty and behaviour and what we ought to do.’

That was the Windsor way – and the world Elizabeth II was born into, a million miles from the world of Meghan Markle who, famously, said of her relationship with Prince Harry ‘we’ve just focused on who we are as a couple’, and ‘this is for us. It’s part of what makes it so special, that it’s just ours.’

There was a streak of hysteria in Diana, Princess of Wales: you sensed it even with a brief acquaintance. Some see a streak of narcissism in Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The Queen was not like that.

The Queen was as sane and sensible as they come. She kept her feet on the ground. (Actually, spending time with her, I noticed she stood for long periods, feet slightly apart, moving her weight regularly from one foot to the other.)

She was rarely flustered: however hectic the schedule, however many stops on the tour, her own steady pace did not vary. ‘Steady as she goes’ was her way – but it wasn’t all plain sailing. Now and again, she did hit choppy waters.

But if you asked her ‘how are you?’, she would invariably reply: ‘Very well, thank you.’ She would never say, as Meghan famously did: ‘Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK.’

Unlike Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, she did not avoid unpleasantness by putting her head in the sand but nor was she an interfering busybody.

Time heals so much and ‘least said soonest mended’ is a policy that often pays dividends. The Queen believed in prayer and patience and hoping for the best.

Sometimes she admitted to being tired at the end of a long day, but Elizabeth II never complained – ever – of doing her royal duty.

‘I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this,’ Meghan is reported to have said, in an aside, while meeting Australians on her first royal tour. That was not something the Queen would ever have said – or thought.

Nor, according to the Duke of Edinburgh, did she ever cry. Some thought they detected tears when the Royal Yacht, launched by the Queen in 1953, was taken out of service in 1997. ‘It was the middle of December,’ snorted Prince Philip. ‘It was bloody cold. We all had tears in our eyes.’

Crying in public is not the Windsor way. The only person seen to conspicuously shed a tear on the day of the Queen’s funeral was Meghan.

To the Queen, the parallels between Harry’s marriage to Meghan and that of her uncle David,  the name she used for Edward VIII, to Wallis Simpson, would have been obvious.

The Prince of Wales (who became Edward VIII) and the Duke of York (who became George VI) were brothers, born only a year or so apart in the mid-1890s, and very close when they were young. The present Prince of Wales (William) and the Duke of Sussex (Harry), are brothers, too, born only a year or two apart in the early 1980s, and they, also, were very close when they were young.

With each set of brothers, the arrival of a 35-year-old American divorcee changed the dynamic of their relationship and ruined everything. And, like the Duke of Windsor, Harry opted for a life in exile. In 1956, the Duchess of Windsor published her own book – The Heart Has Its Reasons – just as surely as Meghan will one day publish hers, possibly with a not dissimilar title.

That same year, the Windsors even gave a no-holds-barred television interview to the Oprah Winfrey of the day, Edward R. Murrow, appearing on the legendary broadcaster’s Person To Person chat show.

Four years earlier, the Duke had returned to England for the funeral of the late King, his younger brother, and reported to his wife that, superficially, he was handled impeccably by courtiers and relations alike – ‘but gee,’ he added, ‘the crust is hard & only granite below.’

Is that how Meghan feels? We may know one day when she ‘speaks her truth’ in full.

The Duke of Windsor returned to England again in 1953 to attend his mother, Queen Mary’s funeral, but was not invited to the family dinner at Windsor Castle that followed. He wrote to his wife: ‘What a smug, stinking lot my relations are and you’ve never seen such a seedy worn-out bunch of old hags most of them have become.’

Whether Harry, when talking privately to Meghan, has ever been as vitriolic about his family as the Queen’s Uncle David was when writing privately to Wallis, we shall never know. Or perhaps we shall.

Seventy years on, Harry chose not to attend the Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service at Westminster Abbey. And when he and Meghan came over from California for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, they were welcomed at some, but by no means all, the family gatherings.

‘Family rifts are always sad,’ the Queen once said to her cousin Margaret Rhodes.

In later life, the Queen came to regret not having been closer to her uncle David. Had she lived on for a few more years, she would almost certainly have continued to provide loving support to Harry and his wife.

Would that have made a difference? Shortly before Elizabeth II’s death, Meghan let slip in an interview that she was not obliged to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) when she and Harry stepped down from their royal duties in 2020.

She also revealed that when she returned to their home at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, she’d found a journal that she had kept during her days as an active member of the Family Firm.

This sorry Sussex saga will run and run, just as the earlier sorry saga of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor did from the time of the Abdication in 1936 until their dying days.

When we get to the Coronation of Charles III, the issue of ‘Harry and Meghan’ – where they are seated, what uniform (if any) he will be allowed to wear, what her body language is telling us, etc,  etc – will be unavoidable.

And, from the new King’s point of view, deeply regrettable.

In 2022, when she heard that Harry and Meghan would not  be attending the memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen reportedly said: ‘Thank goodness.’ 

What did she mean? Thank goodness they’re not coming? Or thank goodness, because they’re not coming the press coverage won’t be all about them? I suspect the latter, but I don’t know. I do know that in 2020, when she read that Pope Francis had used his Sunday morning homily to urge the faithful to steer clear of gossip, calling it ‘the devil’s work and more deadly than the coronavirus’, she heartily agreed. 

Tentatively, I once raised all this with the Duke of Edinburgh. I suggested to him that he and the Queen were both ‘emotionally self-sufficient’.  He agreed, but added: ‘Being emotionally self-sufficient does not make one unfeeling.’

The Queen was delighted when Zara and Mike Tindall named their middle child Lena Elizabeth. She was, however, confused when told the name is pronounced ‘Lay-na’. 

‘It is short for Elena,’ explained Zara. 

‘What’s wrong with Elena?’ asked the Queen, ‘Elena’s a lovely name.’ 

‘Her initials would then have been E.T.,’ said Zara. 

‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me there,’ said the Queen.

[romanovsonelastdance]

Elena Vladimirovna with her husband and daughters.

From left: Marina of Greece, Elena Vladimirovna, Olga of Greece, Nicholas of Greece and Elizabeth of Greece.

[jadeitepandaproductions]

I cant fucking believe this

[gingerofsuburbia]

Queen Elizabeth sprained her ankle so they had to shoot her point blank like a racehorse

[redundant2]

"Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait" interesting snippets

from the book 'Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait', just published by the esteemed author that many say was one of Prince Philip's best friends, Gyles Brandreth.

This one is about Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

"The equerry who took Mrs. Thatcher into the Queen's presence for her very first audience in 1979, sensed how nervous she was. As they were walking down the Buckingham Palace corridor, he said to her, 'Ready with your curtsey, Prime Minister?' 'Oh yes,' said Mrs. Thatcher. When they arrived in the royal presence, he said, 'Your Majesty - the Prime Minister, Your Majesty.' Mrs. Thatcher stepped forward and went into the deepest curtsey the equerry had ever seen - so deep that when she had reached the floor, she couldn't get up. '

"'She simply couldn't,' the equerry told me. 'We had to help her up. I took one side and the Queen took the other. We brought her up to her feet and said no more about it. After the audience, when I collected Mrs. Thatcher to take her back to her car, I said, "Shall we just pause in this anteroom for a little curtsey practice?" We did.'

[anteroom-of-death]

If I wake up 2morrow and check tumblr and find out the queen died I'm laying in the middle ofva freeway

[philibetexcerpts]

“On her twenty-fourth birthday, 21 April 1950, at 8:45 a.m., in her bedroom at the Villa Guardamangia, her telephone rang. When she picked up the receiver she was greeted with a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ performed by a group of young naval officers accompanied by some of the band of HMS Liverpool. According to Bobo, who was there (of course), ‘Lilibet was wildly excited and kept saying, “Oh! Thank you, thank you! That was sweet but who are you?”’ She was answered by a second chorus of the song, harmonised by the officers’ Glee Club, then a burst of bagpipes. Bobo reported to Dickie Moutbatten – whose Flag Officer had been responsible for organising the surprise birthday greeting – that ‘Lilibet first went white, then quite red, and ended up with tears in her eyes.’”

Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait by Gyles Brandreth

[voltronisanobsession]

Can we get some Rachel Elizabeth Dare x male reader headcanons?

Rachel Elizabeth Dare x Reader General Headcanons

OH. MY GOSH. A RACHEL REQUEST IN MY INBOOOXX???? IM SO HAPPY IM SO EXCITED TO WRITE FOR HERRR HEHEEE

Also I usually don’t mention genders that much in my writings, so I hope this was alright for you!!! Not proofread

OKOK

You guys most likely grow your friendship and bond over art!

Reader probably meets her at like some community service event they were forced to go to and just instantly click

You fully believe you’re gonna be bored out of your mind until you meet Rachel. She’s energetic and spontaneous, that energy rubbing off on you

It’s safe to say you both had a lot of fun painting the walls of the community center

The way she focuses her attention to the smallest of details while she paints has you lowkey captivated with the girl

And Rachel grows interested in you as you paint something so unique, she wouldn’t have even thought of creating what you do

You both keep contact and Rachel LOVES hanging out with you!

Reader is most likely just an average teen, spending the day going to school and hanging around New York

You’re like a fresh breath of air for her, allowing her to have a temporary get away from her lavish, suffocating home

You don’t judge or see her differently when she tells you of her extravagant life. You don’t judge her for what others may see as small problems. You listen to her problems, sometimes listening quietly or even giving the red haired girl some advice!

And because of this, Rachel grows closer to you, feeing that you just get her💔

AND UGH

Like you understand talking about personal problems can be HARD, so you just see her as a super strong person for being able to open up to you

No one can break y’all up, you’re each others ride or dies

Honestly I can see this relationship being either platonic or romantic

Both essentially having the same vibes, a romantic relationship would include the more intimate side of being a couple, like kisses and all that fun stuff

But let’s take the romantic route teehee

There are NO walls between y’all

you can read each other like open books

Rachel loves taking you to small, hidden places she finds while out in the city and just being around you

She calls you her muse (LITERALLY SCREAMING)

She’s lowkey made several portraits of you, most of which you haven’t seen because she’s embarrassed 😭😭😭

You guys spend some days just sitting with each other in silence, painting and creating new art that you often give away to anyone who wants it

You most likely know about her ability to see things that most normal people can’t see

There’s times where she’s able to talk you through seeing past the mist, allowing you to see some of the amazing things she sees (though a lot of the times you guys hide away when you see a monster💀)

And Rachel can sense you’re different from everyone else too, with your hyper active self always seeming to know when something is off, along with your crazy agility and strength

You like holding and playing with her hands! there always seems to be a small smudge of paint on her skin and under her nails, the girl unable to wash it away fully

She personally likes playing your hair!

I like to think that Rachel always has hair ties on her wrists so you already know this girl is styling your hair in the most weirdest hairdos LMAO

One time she tied your hair up to make it look like you had a spike Mohawk

Everything is good and fun between y’all tbh! You’ve met her father (this man kinda likes you, kinda doesn’t just because you’re with his daughter)

She likes hanging out and crashing at your home though

Rachel’s strong personality is something your parents/guardians LOVE

They love having her over, Rachel always manages to make the small, quiet apartment loud with laughter!

You like counting the freckles on her cheeks when night falls, her bright eyes staring into yours with admiration (OH MY GOSH I CANT RN😭😭)

Everything is almost perfect tbh

Until everything that happened in battle of the labyrinth and last Olympian, well, happens😭💀

Rachel has a new responsibility as the new carrier of the oracle, which unfortunately means that being a couple is off the table

She has a whole new life as the oracle and you being a new discovered demigod changes a lot of things

You both still care and love each other though

You just,, can’t be together in a romantic sense

But you can’t help but feel happiness for Rachel because she’s finally doing what she was meant to do! She’s always felt different and out of place, so seeing her take this important role fills you with joy!

This girl is actually so lucky to have you by her side, whether it be as her best friend or her boyfriend

You’re just so understanding and supportive, your relationship stays strong even with her role as the oracle and her attending Clarion Ladies Academy

You’re her best friend, her muse

And she’s you’re best friend, your first love

Nothing can break the bond you’ve formed together, through thick and thin, through hardships and heartbreaks, it’s always been you and Rachel against the world

[fashionbooksmilano]

Hollywood Moments

By Murray Garrett

With an introductory note by Debbie Reynolds

Abrams, New York 2002, 178 pages, 24x30,5cm, 145 duotone photographa, ISBN 978-0810932425

euro 80,00

A follow-up to Hollywood Candid showcases 145 images of stars taken during intimate or irreverent moments, in a volume containing many never-before-seen photos and complemented by personal reminiscences.

he pathos of Old Hollywood emerges in this dazzling collection of black-and-white photos from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Celebrity photojournalist Garrett captured his subjects at nightclubs, industry soirées and parties-an in-between world where stars tried to enjoy their private lives while still very much on public display. Garrett maintained a studied reserve toward the celebrities (he made a point of never addressing them by their first names) and his photos have a appealing mixture of intimacy and detachment as the celebrities drink, laugh and carouse while tricked out in formal wear and immaculate hair-dos. He is especially fascinated with Hollywood divas like Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Leslie Caron and Ava Gardner; his photos show the warmth of these vibrant personalities while hinting at the strain they suffered in maintaining their glamorous facades. The photos are accompanied by piquant reminiscences: of the wise-cracking Zsa-zsa Gabor shoving her way into every picture frame, the lovable Jimmy Durante shoving his way into oncoming traffic, and the thuggish Milton Berle shoving hapless underlings out of his dressing room. In one tense picture worth a thousand words, a vampy Lauren Bacall embraces Van Heflin while her husband, Humphrey Bogart, looks on ("I heard Bogey say, in a chilled tone, 'Van, that's close enough'"). In these lively, unlacquered but sympathetic portraits, celebrities emerge as flawed, human and never entirely free of self-consciousness.

17/10/23

[sisteroutsiders]

An Unseen Photo Album Preserves Life of Audre Lorde

A photograph given by Lorde to Wiesen-Cook while at university together. 

Intimate family moments photographs circa 1968 by Cook.

Audre Lorde and her long-time partner Francis Clayton at the beach with Cook and Coss.

Birthday celebrations in Manhattan, 1977.

A photograph from the Gay March on Washington with Lorde in 1979 when she was a speaker and a poster by Ann Cammett from the 1990 "I Am Your Sister" conference in Boston with Jean Weisinger's photograph.

Lorde’s son, Jonathan celebrates graduation day at Vassar College in 1986.

In 1985, Lorde was honored with the dedication of the Audre Lorde Women’s Poetry Center at Hunter College, where one of Lorde’s students continues to lead the program today.

Book party at Hunter College in the spring 1991.

A pilgrimage to the Pele, visiting a volcano in Hawaii with friends, there for the 1991 Eclipse. 

Lorde’s lover Gloria I. Joseph said Lorde would make these small collages with images and text for her friends.

Lorde at a ceremony where Governor Cuomo named her poet laureate of New York State in 1991. A title she held until her passing at 58 the next year.

The final page of the album shows a puppet street performance, Holocaust memorials in Berlin on Cook and Coss's last visit with Lorde, and images celebrating Lorde's legacy after death in 1992.

Curator Victoria Munro writes:

“Powerful and Dangerous: The Images and Words of Audre Lorde” exhibition at the Alice Austen House is a celebration of the radical work of Black, lesbian feminist, writer, activist and poet, Audre Lorde. The exhibition was a collaborative process made with some of Lorde’s closest friends, colleagues, and sister comrades. I was so fortunate to have their guidance in the creation of this exhibition. Two of Lorde’s long-time friends, Blanche Cook and Clare Coss, guided my initial explorations into the personal realm of her writing practice. They welcomed me into their home to view their archive of personal photographs and ephemera which spanned decades of personal celebrations and professional intersections.

Cook, Coss, and I discussed Lorde’s time spent on Staten Island (1972 to 1987) raising her two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, with her partner Francis Clayton. Cook and Coss illuminated the many wonderful afternoons spent on St. Pauls Avenue and the powerful writing and teaching that Lorde produced during these years. Some of these works included her most celebrated:  From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), The Black Unicorn (1978), The Cancer Journals (1980), and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984). She also created a new publishing house with activist Barbara Smith called Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

The most revelatory object they shared with me was a large album of personal photographs they had created to celebrate Audre’s life when she passed in 1992. Up until this point, the only people that had viewed this album were Lorde’s children. I was so moved by Cook and Coss’s generosity when they allowed me to include this personal memento in the exhibition. The album was frail, and it felt urgent to protect and archive the documents so they could be shared with our audience and future generations.

To make this possible, I decided to create a self-published book that stayed true to the album’s arrangement, placement, and personal notes, and could be touched and shared. The entire album was carefully scanned by our archivist and brought back together digitally to make this a reality.

There are so many connections that these unique images make between lesbian artists, activists, and photographers. These images are essential to understanding the forces of creative collaborations and the lesbian community during that period.

This book represents an intimate portrait of Lorde celebrating her contagious energy, love of people, flirty fun lesbian play, and prolific writing practice.

Cook and Coss wrote this statement to accompany the album:

“Soon after Audre Lorde departed this earth, we found comfort and consolation in the creation of an album of our chosen family, featuring some of the happiest shared moments of our lives together. These snapshots illuminate high-spirited flirty fun gatherings: birthdays, holidays at Audre and Frances’ Staten Island home; romps in the Hamptons; Lesbian and Gay demonstrations in NYC and DC; Audre’s alternative cancer treatment in Berlin; our amazing Hawaii eclipse trip; Audre honored as NY State poet; the last sad loving goodbye days on St. Croix.

This is the first time we have shared this album with the exception of our god-children Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins MD and Jonathan Ashley Rollins. We thank curator Victoria Munro for her care and appreciation of our photo memories to be included in the Alice Austen House tribute to Audre Lorde.”

Source: "Powerful and Dangerous: The Words and Images of Audre Lorde," an exhibition at Alice Austen House. Shared by Plea for the Fifth. Explore the full exhibition online.

[grandmaster-anne]

"It didn’t affect her at all. She never for a moment thought the cheering was for her personally.  It’s for the position she holds – it’s for the role she fulfils, it’s because she’s Queen. That’s all.  She knows that.  Her head hasn’t been turned by being Queen – not at all.  She’s quite normal."

— Prince Philip remarked on the Queen being cheered by millions

Extracted from Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, by Gyles Brandreth

[romanovsonelastdance]

Elena Vladimirovna with her daughters Elizabeth, Olga & Marina.

[master-john-uk]

Here is a book worth reading... and I doubt it will be offered at half price.

"Elizabeth: An intimate portrait" is a biography of our late Queen by Gyles Brandreth. It gives an interesting, and honest insight into the lives of The Royal Family... written by a man who prides himself in correct annunciation of the spoken English language!

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Why Catherine avoids looking into cameras when Meghan always courts the lens. by u/Mistressbrindello

Why Catherine avoids looking into cameras when Meghan always courts the lens. We know Meghan always finds the camera, no occasion is too solemn for grandstanding, but I thought this from Gyles Brandreth - who wrote biographies of both Prince Philip - with whom he was friends - and also the late Queen, was interesting for a comparison (though not new).So many photographs show Meghan courting the cameraElizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, was published at the same time the Markle's docu-drama came out last year and was probably overshadowed by that. Brandreth made some interesting comments on the advice Philip gave Catherine and explained how her indifference toward cameras and the attention that comes with being a British royal is in line with royal policy and fits with the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth's behaviour and priorities. He quotes Prince Philip:“‘If you believe the attention is for you personally,’ he warned, ‘you’re going to end up in trouble. The attention is for your role, what you do, what you’re supporting.” Philip’s advice didn’t stop there. “‘It isn’t for you as an individual. You are not a celebrity. You are representing the royal family. That’s all. Don’t look at the camera. The queen never looks at the camera. Never. Look at who you’re talking to. Look at what you’ve come to see.’”Brandreth noted Kate, 41, “does not look at the camera. Whenever she is interviewed, Catherine talks about the matter in hand, never about herself.” He doesn't make any comparisons but I thought the "Look at what you've come to see" is the reason why Catherine is so popular. Meghan has to make herself the centre of attention whether it's coffee or Uvalde or veterans. It's another subtle form of shade to praise Catherine - as did the DoE.(Excerpts from his website https://ift.tt/oIQwVXn in Cosmo from 6 years ago talking about Meghan's camera style: https://ift.tt/u2ZlXoL post link: https://ift.tt/86m4ST3 author: Mistressbrindello submitted: December 21, 2023 at 07:07PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[mybeingthere]

Philippe Halsman French poet, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. NYC, USA. 1949. © DACS / Comité Cocteau, Paris 2018. © Philippe Halsman | Magnum Photos

"When two creative masterminds meet, you’d expect the results to be explosive; but when Jean Cocteau arrived, half an hour late, at Philippe Halsman’s New York studio in 1949, it seemed things were going to fall flat. “To my immense disappointment,” Halsman recalls in his book Halsman: Sight and Insight. “I saw that instead of my becoming the instrument of his imagination, he was ready to be the instrument of mine.”

“It proved that even people who are supposed to be fountains of imagination cannot spurt on too short a notice,” he adds wryly.

Here, writer Charlotte Jansen, revisits that night through Halsman’s stories of what went on behind the scenes, revealing an amusing and intimate insight into the practices of both artists at the peak of their careers.

At the time of the historic shoot, in 1949, both artists were already well-respected in their fields: Halsman had relocated from his Montparnasse studio to New York at the beginning of the 1940s, and was established as one of the city’s best-known portrait photographers, and had shot Albert Einstein, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor and Lauren Bacall, among many other famous names. Cocteau, meanwhile, was a published author, accomplished filmmaker, and distinguished member of Paris’ bohemian circles, frequently in the company of the likes of Picasso, Edith Piaf, Coco Chanel and Jean Genet." Continue reading https://www.magnumphotos.com/.../when-philippe-halsman.../

[yr-obedt-cicero]

I heard somewhere Hamilton gained weight and lost sleep after Philip's death, is this true? And damn that's sad :(

Yes and no.

Hamilton was already gaining weight before Philip's death, as reported repeatedly from 1790 and so on.

Angelica Church wrote a letter to Elizabeth from London concerning the reports of her husband's weight gain;

“Colonel Beckwith tells me that our dear Hamilton writes too much and takes no exercise, and grows too fat. I hate both the word and the thing, and I desire you will take care of his health and his good looks, why I should find him on my return a dull, heavy fellow!”

(Source: The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton. By Allan Mclane Hamilton.)

Baron Von Steuben also showed concern for Hamilton's, not only emotional, but physical health. In a letter [16 December, 1790] he suggests Hamilton a diet containing more vegetables than meat, and says he should go on horseback rides every morning for eight or ten miles, and claims his walks on foot are doing him no good;

“My good friend? I learn with sorrow Your indisposition I am persuaded that the lack of Exercise is the principal Cause, I conjure You to bring the remedy there, give You a small bidet and trot Your eight or ten miles all the Mornings, Your races on foot is not enough. Saved that Health so dear to so many people, and So useful to this tender Miss Collumbia.

I have consulted my friend Tissot, I order you to eat a lot of roots, such as refort or horsraddish, carrots, parsley roots in your broth, turnips, chicory and saddlery, a little meat and a lot of exercise—I become Charletan—but what will I not become for You?”

(Source: Founders Archive)

Hamilton must have taken on the Baron's suggestion, as apparently in 1791, AH corresponded with Henry Lee, regarding a horse to assist him in getting out and exercising. Hamilton requested a gentle horse, and Lee made sure to find one that would meet with his needs. Lee then wrote to Hamilton [12 August 1791];

“Mr Cox was about taking to you my riding horse, but my apprehension of yr. necessary hurry & my wish to compare him with a horse I have sent for, concluded a procrastination of my execution of your request & my ardent desire. No other consideration could have induced me to postpone a measure you reckon essential to your health.

Nor shall time be lost in presenting you with this trivial testimony of the zeal with which I engage in any matter which goes to your comfort.”

(Source: Founders Archive)

I don't think it was anything detrimental, truthfully. Hamilton was prone to ailment and being slim with a short stature, I think the couple of pounds he put on was just more noticable due to this (Stop shaming him for his dad bod, okay). Trumbull's 1792 portrait gives a perspective of it though.

So, no; this was a couple of years before Philip's death. But there are hints to Hamilton losing sleep during his long period of grievance, like this 1805 portrait that shows Hamilton's strikingly plane luggage worth of bags under his eyes;