Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
First cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, former MI6 worker who lodged at Buckingham Palace, and close companion to the Queen Mother.
On the island
Eight records
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm
From the soundtrack to High Society. Chosen because it was played during a happy time with friends on a coffee farm in Kenya while drinking White Ladies.
Sung at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; chosen as a memory of great occasions.
Scottish air sung by her eldest brother during childhood; brings back memories.
Epitome of having achieved grown-upness; a nice tune that reminds her of that moment.
The Vatican RagFavourite
Princess Margaret sent it to her husband when he had a heart attack in hospital; it still makes her laugh.
From Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro'. Chosen because her husband's nephew, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, has a wonderful voice.
Very much part of her Scottish childhood.
Memory of happy times with her husband and children watching those programmes.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:46Do you regret that [almost vanished] world [of privilege you were born into]?
No, I mean the point was that when one was growing up [it] didn't seem remotely privileged. I mean my parents were both mad keen gardeners and were perpetually upside down in a flower bed weeding or doing something, you know. And I was the youngest by a very long way. So that I had a really, in a way, quite a lonely childhood, which suited me fine, I mean, luckily. Got me used to being alone now, which I am as a widow. And of course I was brought up with a family who were all keen on shooting, fishing, and that sort of thing.
Presenter asks
3:04As a young girl you were a bridesmaid to the then Princess Elizabeth when she got married. What do you remember of that day?
Well, alas, with old age creeping up on me, I remember less and less. But um no, it was a wonderful and joyful occasion, and in a way the service in the Abbey is I don't really remember very much about, because one was carried away with the music and everything else, you know.
Presenter asks
6:17How much do you think the Queen herself has changed in these sixty years [since her coronation]?
I think she's a very pragmatic person. And I think she has overseen a gentle change in the monarchy, bringing it a little bit nearer the people. You know, in doing that job you have to squash the self of you in order to give yourself wholeheartedly to the job. Spontaneity has to leave your life. You know six months ahead what you're going to be doing every day. And that demands quite a lot of sacrifice. And she has done that. And I think she's just the perfectly marvellous queen.
The keepsakes
The book
The Reader's Digest Book of British Gardens
I shall spend happy hours devising well-watered green gardens.
The luxury
I'll take my favourite jersey, in case cold nights are available on the desert island.
Presenter asks
7:07There are people who believe that inherited privilege is wrong. How much do you think that the constraints put on the individual [in the monarchy] might be a good reason not to have a monarchy?
Well, all I can say really is that if you don't have a monarch you have to have a president. I personally can't imagine that people would be wildly overexcited at say President Callaghan or President [Thatcher] with the same intensity as they view a monarch, and that there's something about hereditary that I don't know, but it in a way it suddenly manages to produce greatness out of those people.
Presenter asks
13:30Your father gave you some sound advice — he said the only things to be regretted in life are the things you don't do. How did that shape you?
I thought it was rather a splendid thing to tell your child. I love adventure. I love the feeling it's just possible that I'm treading on a stone that nobody's ever actually trodden on before.
Presenter asks
26:33For someone whose life has been that of privilege and doing things properly, when you fell in love it was with a penniless married man. What happened to your upper-class pragmatism?
My parents thought it was the most brilliant idea that it had ever been. But anyway, that was no good, because I'd fallen in love, and by the time I'd met him he was already well separated from his first wife.
“I do think sometimes one does feel a bit of a dinosaur. And I find it in a way, especially now, because all my brothers and sisters have died. And I am the last dinosaur of my family remaining on this earth.”
“I emptied my entire magazine at a very low flying German aeroplane that came over right literally tree top level. And I thought that, you know, some miracle I might hit the petrol tank.”
“I love adventure. I love the feeling it's just possible that I'm treading on a stone that nobody's ever actually trodden on before.”
“The head of the organization was just known by the letter C and he wrote in green ink and he was God. I mean, he promised you, he was really God.”
“[When I put a milk bottle on the window sill at Buckingham Palace] I got a rocket, out of all proportion to my hideous act, by the master of the household, who said that I was defacing the front of Buckingham Palace.”
“She had this miraculous way of somehow turning everything into fun. And I don't know how she did it. She was just heaven to work for.”