“The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave.”
In a public declaration in the early years of World War II. Sourced from the British Royal Family History website.
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon:
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Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon: Citations en anglais
On the fate of a gift of a nebuchadnezzar of champagne (20 bottles' worth) even if her family didn't come for the holidays.
Quoted by Graham Taylor in Elizabeth: The Woman and the Queen (2002)
“Never trust them, never trust them. They can't be trusted.”
On the Germans, to Woodrow Wyatt (16 November 1991), as quoted in The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: Volume Two (2000) by Woodrow Wyatt, p. 608
“I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out.”
Murmured to the gay writer Sir Noël Coward at a gala. While she mounted a staircase lined with Guards, she noticed Coward's eyes flicker momentarily over the soldiers; as quoted by Thomas Blaikie in You look awfully like the Queen: Wit and Wisdom from the House of Windsor (2002)
“We'd have to go self-service.”
After a Tory minister advised her not to employ homosexuals.
[Summerskill, Ben, Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, The Observer, 10 November 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/nov/10/monarchy.bensummerskill]
“I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye.”
After the Luftwaffe bombed the Buckingham Palace whilst the King and Queen were in residence on 13 September 1940.
[Davies, Caroline, How the Luftwaffe bombed the palace, in the Queen Mother's own words, The Guardian, 13 September 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/sep/13/queen-mother-biography-shawcross-luftwaffe]
“Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash.”
On hearing that Edwina Mountbatten had been buried at sea, as quoted in The Straits Times [Singapore] (7 August 2000)
“Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?”
On returning a toilet roll to a demonstrator who had thrown it at her, as quoted by Sir Peter Ustinov in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
As quoted by Michael Parker in Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography (2009)<!-- Shawcross -->
On being warned that a functionary to whom she was about to be introduced was a communist, as quoted by the Duchess of Grafton in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
As quoted by Lord Home of the Hirsel in The Queen Mother Remembered (2002), BBC Books
Said to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, when she realised he had taken her glass of wine just as she prepared to propose a toast during a lunch to celebrate her 100th birthday.
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Hugo
Elizabeth, The Queen Mother
Arrow Books/Random House
2006
490
978-0-09-947662-7
“Since I have landed in Quebec, I think we can say that I am Canadian.”
Answering two Boer War veterans of Scottish heritage in Quebec who had asked the Queen if she was Scots or English.
[Elizabeth II, Elizabeth II, 2002, Speech by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Ceremonial and Canadian Symbols Promotion > The Canadian Monarchy, Vancouver, Ottawa, Queen's Printer for Canada, http://www.pch.gc.ca/queen/, 7 November 2007, harv]
