Queen Mum Falters on Memory Lane : Writer Accused of Ill Table Manners in Reporting Anecdote

Novelist A. N. Wilson has violated one of the sternest rules governing treatment of British royalty--reporting a dinner table chat with the Queen Mum in which she recalls giggling at T. S. Eliot reading “The Waste Land” and can’t remember the name of either the poet or the poem.

The conversation with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Wilson took place nearly a decade ago and was recounted by Wilson in the weekly Spectator magazine.

In the conversation, reproduced in dialogue form, the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and widow of King George VI was said to have revealed a fondness for detective stories and a problem with her cash flow: “Had such an awful afternoon today with my bank manager, scolding me about my overdraft.”

After a few remarks about politics came this gem of an account of a poetry evening at Windsor Castle during World War II, at which T. S. Eliot recited “The Waste Land.”

Elizabeth: “We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem. . . . I think it was called ‘The Desert.’ And first the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King.”

Wilson: “ ‘The Desert,’ ma’am? Are you sure it wasn’t called ‘The Waste Land?’ ”

Elizabeth: “That’s it. I’m afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked in a bank, and we didn’t understand a word.”

Wilson: “I believe he DID once work in a bank.”

The article, published in the midst of national celebrations of the queen mother’s 90th birthday, was thoughtful and affectionate but drew a flurry of outrage.

“Scoundrel!” thundered Lord Wyatt of Weeford. Lord Wyatt, a former journalist, was host of the dinner. He called it a “deceitfully obtained and stolen ‘interview.’ ”

Nicholas Soames, member of Parliament and scion of the Churchill family, called it “an intolerable betrayal,” “an appalling want of chivalry” and “an absolutely fundamental breach of trust.”

Wilson, 39, clearly knew he was courting trouble. As a preface to the article, the first in a series of interviews, he wrote:

“It is probably the grossest impropriety to embarrass her, or her host, by repeating our conversation.

“I do so, however, without very much compunction, since she never gives ‘interviews,’ and I can think of no better person than Queen Elizabeth with whom to start off an occasional series of conversations with men and women who have lived through most of the years of this century . . . and whose memories stretch back far.”