The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Do Let’s Have Another Drink!: The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother by Mr. Gareth Russell

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Do Let's Have Another Drink!: The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother by Mr. Gareth Russell For fans of The Crown and Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, a deliciously entertaining collection of 101 fascinating and funny anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother—one for each year of her life. During her lifetime, the Queen Mother was as famous for her clever quips, pointed observations, and dry-as-a-martini delivery style as she was for being a beloved royal. Now, Do Let’s Have Another Drink recounts 101 (one for each year of her remarkable life) amusing and astonishing vignettes from across her long life, including her coming of age during World War I, the abdication of her brother-in-law and her unexpected ascendance to the throne, and her half century of widowhood as her daughter reigned over the United Kingdom. Featuring new revelations and colorful anecdotes about the woman Cecil Beaton, the high society photographer, once summarized as “a marshmallow made on a welding machine,” Do Let’s Have Another Drink is a delightful celebration of one of the most consistently popular members of the royal family.

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Goodreads.com, Forge has Chris Voss. Today, we're going to be talking about the Queen Mum. May she rest in peace. She recently passed away. But we're going to be talking about her life and some of the things that went into it. We have author Mr. Gareth Russell is on the show with us today. His new book comes out November 1st, 2022. It's called Do Let's Have Another Drink, The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen

Mother is going to be on the show with us talking about his amazing new book that just came out. And he is educated at Oxford University and Queens University, Belfast. He is a historian, novelist, and playwright. He is the author of The Ship of Dreams, Young and Damned and Fair. What's the story of my young life? Anyways, kidding. The Emperors and an Illustrated Introduction to the Tudors. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Welcome to the show, Gareth. How are you? Very well. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. We have quite a few Irish, Ireland, Irish, Irish friends that come on the show. So welcome to the show. We're glad to have another one from the beautiful state of the beautiful countryside of Ireland, state, country, whatever you want to call it. Welcome to the show.

Yeah. Maybe I should have some whiskey at this point. Yeah, always. Always a good idea. Always a good idea. So welcome to the show. Give us a.com, wherever you want people to find out more about you

and follow you on social media. On the vast hinterlands of social media, you can find me on underscore Gareth Russell, G-R-E-T-H-R-U-S-S-E-L-L on Instagram. And also on Facebook, I like to post on this day information about the books on Gareth Russell, historian and author.

There you go. So, on this book, it's titled Do Let's Have Another Drink. Tell us a little bit, for the American audience, why you chose the title of that book. So, there's a very distinct, it's not even a dialect, it's technically a sociolect, because it's really a sort of upper-class accent.

Some people are surprised that the late Queen Mother Elizabeth II's mother was Scottish, but she doesn't sound what we would imagine a Scottish accent to sound like. And that's because there's an accent called received pronunciation, which is the upper-class accent. Think of Mary in Downton Abbey, and you've got it.

And they have their own special syntax and in in how they say do let's have another drink they hit the do hard do let's have another drink and it's really a filler word that tries to get you to misbehave slightly and to say that you should have fun and do let's have another one and apparently it was what the queen mother used to try to say to people to get them to throw off their meetings after lunch and have a nice gin and do bonnie so it was one of her catchphrases one of her sayings and i thought it was perfect for the book and you recount in the book 101 one for each year of remarkable life amusing and astounding vignettes from across her long life

tell us about what that means and what that entails. Yeah. So she was born, the Queen Mother was born in Scotland. Well, she was a member of the Scottish aristocracy. She was born in 1900. She died in 2002, shortly before she celebrated her 102nd birthday. So because there were 101 birthdays, I thought, let's do 101 anecdotes. And the book is grouped together into 10 chapters, one for each decade of a really remarkable life. I start each chapter with a little introduction to what was happening in the world and Elizabeth's life, and then share anecdotes about some of her feuds, some of her fallings out, and stories that were told to me that have never been published before about her life and her sense of humor. So really, this is designed in a way that I hope the Queen Mother would like,

which is that it's supposed to be that you can dip into it, enjoy an anecdote. And as I say in the book, listen, these are stories that you can tell over a drink or a really good meal with even better company than I've done my job right. It's supposed to be somewhere between a biography, a travel guide to a world that is gone and and a series of fun stories to tell and discuss there you go so was it always over booze or just was it tea you know no there was she looks she could handle her drink i mean like she really she she could handle it and there's a great story that was told to me by someone who worked for the royal household here in northern ireland in 1988 the queen mother was 87 she She came over, it was the

height of the troubles here, so security was quite tight. And at Hillsborough Castle, which is the official royal residence in Northern Ireland, the Queen Mother invited several strapping generals who had been on service there and their wives. There's an event in sort of more formal dinners called the Loyal Toast, where you stand up and toast the Queen. So the Queen Mother gets up and toasts her daughter. Everyone has a nice drink. And she says, you know, under the circumstances, let's toast the people of Northern Ireland. So everyone has another drink.

Northern Ireland has six counties. She knew all of the names and she toasted each one of them. And she was completely clear-headed. But I am reliably informed that after she left, a general threw up in the umbrella stand. So she certainly enjoyed her drinks. I made a lot of them because research is so important. But she enjoyed food.

Some of the earlier stories are really focused on her time as a teenager during the First World War. So they're less upbeat and less amusing. But the stories stories later on there's a lot of them told over alcohol a lot told about scotland and just this incredible joy that she had for life right into her 90s and she loved walking in scotland drinking eating good food meeting people from all backgrounds. So I found that kind of zest for life just very engaging to write about. And I try to capture that in the book. There you go. There you go. So it sounds like she had a pretty good time. I mean, you know, if I had to live through that age, I'd probably have drank a lot too.

Yeah. Her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, said that people celebrated her mother, you know, approaching her 100th birthday and Princess Margaret said, well, actually, it's quite sad because mummy doesn't have anyone left alive that she can discuss her childhood with or memories with. She can't say, do you remember? There was a sadness really by the end. She'd lost so many people. But I think she did. She really... One of the things I talk about in the book is that she was 14 years old when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914. And she lived through the First World War and saw really horrific things.

One of her brothers was killed. The others were either physically or mentally destroyed by it. She lost 15 friends in the trenches. And I think that it gave her this inner steel in her personality, but also a sense that you have to enjoy today because tomorrow really is not promised. That is true. That is true. Most people put off pleasure and happiness today because they're striving and some never achieve it. You know, one of my friends when I was young, I was still in my 20s, an older gentleman who worked for me, I think he was in his 60s or late

50s. He told me, he says, he was complaining to me about going to funerals for his friends. And he said to me, he said, Chris, there's a, always stuck with me. He said, Chris, there's a time in your life where you go to chris there's a time in your life where you go to weddings there's a time in your life we go to funerals yeah and you watch all your friends kind of disappear around you and it gets a little lonely especially if you live a long life and i imagine you know would you say 101 she lived to yeah yeah so she uh you know you you end up out living even like some of your children sometimes. Well, she did. Sadly, her youngest daughter, Princess Margaret, died six weeks before her stroke.

And the Queen Mother's son-in-law, Prince Philip, who, of course, passed away last year, he, at 99, he made a joke and said, I really do not want to live to 100 like my mother-in-law has because it's awful. He said it's really awful. You to live to 100 like my mother-in-law has because it's awful. He said, it's really awful. You know, he said she has just – and it actually got to the stage where she kind of stopped going to funerals because there were too many of them. Wow. So I think you're absolutely – it is something that when I started doing this book, actually,

a friend of mine said, this is going to be so interesting to see how a life changes when it's that long. Yeah. And so did you find that when you as you went through and researched i did i found certain things as she got older not callous isn't the right word but there was certainly an element of of she had become slight it's interesting she would cry at the memorial service for veterans on the 11th of november because that was what that had been set up right after the first world war in Britain. But she wasn't always, in her 90s, that affected by people dying.

And I think, to me, that is the effect of living through that many bereavements and that loss. But when she was at the memorial service, she felt like she was 18 again and it was you know and to me that was so fascinating to see and the other thing i think she she became slightly less trusting understandably because she you know she was very popular you know she came from a large family with lots of friends she had a wonderful time when she was a debutante in London High Society in the early 1920s. But I think what she learned after she married into the royal family, and I'm sure this is true of people in most positions of public prominence, is that people that she thought were her friends were telling her one thing

and telling rumors or lies about her behind her back. And the thing that i think really shocked her was that for a year decades she had been considered herself really good friends with a high society very celebrated photographer called cecil beacon and cecil had she had intervened directly to get cecil a knighthood ail Beacon, that had been denied to him for years because the government knew he was a homosexual and they didn't want to give it to him. And so she directly intervened and got it for him. And Cecil, in the 1980s, and she wouldn't, she refused to go to his funeral because after, because just before, sorry, his memorial,

didn't go to the funeral, wouldn't go to the memorial service because segments from his diary were published in which he had, you know, he'd been making fun of how fat she was and how bad her teeth were wow years and she thought well we were i thought we were friends i think she realized a lot of people that if you're someone of public prominence you can't trust a lot of people so i think she became slightly less trusting of people around her she got older i can see how you become jaded by something like that. You know, you just be like, you know, people are mean. You know, I've seen what people say about me on the internet.

I remember catching someone once on Twitter. There was two people having a conversation about me. And they're like, I hate that Chris Voss. He's so annoying. He puts out so much content. He's always blabbing his big mouth. The other person's like, yeah, he hasabbing his big mouth the other person's like yeah he has a big mouth and the other person's like yeah but i still follow him the other person's

like what you still follow him and he's like and they were like yeah because i'm just waiting to see the car crash and that was about 10 years ago so they said they got a long ass wait in fact like that's the thing you you kind of i think it's i mean that i yeah i've heard that it's it's just my screw that guy i get that all the time on youtube screw that guy i saved the comment from like 13 years ago like this guy's a fake's going to go out of business next year. And the comments are 13 years now. Here we are. So it sounds like a fun celebration of her life. Would you describe it as that?

Yeah, absolutely. I find a lot more there to like than dislike. I mean, I think always any author that tells you they're completely impartial is the one who's trying to hide something from you. That's just, you know, you're not writing a budget report. You're writing a biography or a book. I always think the historians, you say, oh, I didn't really have an opinion or I was completely impartial. They were partial. They just don't want anyone to figure it out. And I always, you know, I just, I've read biographies where I think the historian's too harsh or too sympathetic to their subject, but I like a historian that will tell you upfront,

this is kind of where I landed. I find a lot more to like and admire about her than otherwise. There certainly were traits that were not as commendable or likable, and they're in the book too. She had an absolutely Olympian ability to hold a grudge. I mean, really, she let nothing go.

For some people, and then other people, she could be surprisingly forgiving for. It was tenacious but inconsistent as a trait um it's like all my ex-girlfriends some of them still have a grudge against me yeah some of them are some of the exact assume that they do right yeah and i and you know, but also I just, I really, I also was aware that just with the nature of what time is and how it passes, that I was hopefully in a position where I could talk to people who knew her and preserve their memories for, you know, before we can't do that anymore. And the people were so kind and funny it was a really it was a different book to write because it was dealing with living people and it was it was hugely entertaining and also i think just as we're talking about kind of the power of memory

and looking back there is something i take it to me it's an honor that people kind of take you down the garden path of their memories. But there's something really nice about seeing people light up as they tell their memories. You know, and it was, I loved it. I really, really loved writing this book. And it made me laugh, you know, writing it. It really did. I was so entertained. So I hope readers are too.

Well, I imagine, you know, from the title of the book, Do Let's Have Another Drink, you know, you would entertain around drinks and food and stuff. And that was part of her job probably as queen to, you know, entertain and do all that sort of thing. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far.

We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneur ism, uh, podcasting, corporate stuff,

uh, with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. Uh, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out

chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. It feeds in. She was born an Earl's daughter. Her father was Lord Strathmore. Her mother, Cecilia, was his countess. It was still a world in which a lot of business of politics

and building networks was done over of politics and and and and building networks was done over lunches and dinners and shooting weekends and she really continued that on she believed really strongly that hospitality and display helped britain's reputation on the international stage and she also believed if you had a guest that you you made them feel special that she took being a hostess very seriously so what she would do is she would keep a very detailed list of who gave her what gift and if they came to stay for the weekend she made sure that gift was brought out and displayed somewhere so that they saw that so i think yes she absolutely took host you know good food and good drink and good

company seriously because it can build networks. Otherwise, she was a very temperamental chef at one point in the 1980s. Now, you have quite a few books. How many books do you have? I'm looking at a whole pile of them here on the – I should have an answer to this. I think at least eight, maybe one, two, three. It, it, it, it, it, it.

Yeah, let's go with it it i'm gonna i'm just throwing that out now there's another book that i see here do let's have another drink with a different cover is that that'll be our british cover it's the british cover yeah the black and gold one's the british one yeah that's kind of interesting how it's different on the thing yeah i do i it's it's great when you have a book with two different covers and you like them both because it doesn't always happen. We have. We have.

Sometimes we've had Canadian authors on and they'll have like two different covers for the Canadian books for like novels and stuff. Really? That is interesting because my. So this is published by Simon and Schuster and it's and it's the same in the US and Canada. So it's exactly the same cover and edition. So that's interesting. It's different. In fact, novels. I think I've heard that. But it's fiction the same cover and edition. So that's interesting. In fact, novels,

I think I've heard that, that it's fiction, sometimes they do different covers. Yeah, and it's interesting what they do. I think the American cover was a bit more racy, and the Canadian cover of recent novels was a bit more, I don't know, it wasn't racy, let's put it that way.

You wrote, I think, a couple books on the Titanic, I think. That was even more complicated. That had a different title in Britain as well. But it's just one. Yeah, so The Ship of Dreams I wrote on the Titanic. That was my book before that. And you've written about the English monarchy, the emperors, Europe's rulers.

So you've written a lot of great history books i figured we'd throw them in as a plug so people can check out your work there as well what was what was the what was it about this book that kind of set you set it apart from some of the other books you've done on on european history i mean i suppose the titanic book i mean just weren't talking to you now is two streets over from where thomas andrews who designed the titanic lived and left from to go on board so so when i say so the reason why i kind of prefix this slightly with that caveat is i was obviously aware writing titanic and thomas andrews is one of the six figures i look at in my book the ship of dreams i was aware that he still has family alive but it's not the same as the people still, as friends and sources being

alive. So really what was particularly different with Do Let's Have Another Drink is you were sitting down to interview people, which I didn't obviously have to, could do with any of the other ones. The first half of the book, because she lived such a long life, was the same, going back and looking at diaries and unpublished archives and things like that but but it really was the interview component for the second half of do let's have another drink that was so different this also was just a lighter more conversational book than some of the other ones so this is really trying to share facts and in a in a conversational over a drink sort of way the others are are narrative books of history yeah i had two great grandmothers one time in my life i had a grandmother a great grandmother and

a great great grandmother a lot wow and they lived to be i think it was a hundred something or close to that but yeah and and it was it was, it was wild. I would tell people, you know, I have three grandparents still alive. They're like, really? Like my grandmother's dead, you know? And I was like, well, I had three of them on one side and I don't know, they just West Virginia, they lived a very hard life, you know, they have houses and stuff. So, but they, they saw a lot of their lifetime. I remember going up to their house when i was a kid at four and you know they still had old washboards i think i bathed in the giant sink and they had outhouses and their life was still in the 70s and the things they must have saw you know even the recent queen mom who passed away you know i would have loved to have sat down with her and just got like i'm she probably would

have never given it to me but just got some straight opinions on everyone from churchill to every you know the presidents she lived through of our country i mean she's seen some things man and it would be interesting to hear her perspective yeah i suppose that was sort of with elizabeth the second i think everyone wanted to know. Yeah. And there are rumours that you hear about people that she liked and didn't like, but it's always quite hard to credit them. And I think the thing with an... I think because the 20th century,

this is the same with your great-grandparents and great-great-great-great-grandparents in particular, is when you have a century that is as much of a change as the 20th century is, it's not just the factor of the longevity, it's the social factors weighing into that. If you were someone who somehow managed to live from 1600 to 1700, you will have seen major political events,

but you won't have seen daily life change that significantly. If you live from 1900 to 2000, it's a completely unrecognizable world yeah totally and i mean we went from we went from buggies and carts to cell phones yeah and i find it i find out when she was um when the queen mother was writing about when she was eight years old her tutors asked her to write a little essay called a recent invention airplanes and she writes that the airplanes look like cigars and they have big propellers but they're not safe and you can't travel in them and it's just and then while she's writing this her mother's friend the countess of rothas is booking a ticket to sail on the Titanic.

Like, it's just, when you sort of start to think of the sheer panorama of history that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon saw, it's absolutely extraordinary. Huh? That is awesome. That is awesome. Yeah. I like that. It looks like a cigar and it's not very safe. It was her assessment

of early airplanes. You know, I still think, you know, what did we recently do? We recently crashed a satellite because, you know, just fuck it, 300 and some odd million dollars. We're just like, let's ram that into a rock into space because, I don't know. We'll see. We needed stuff to do, man. And, yeah, it's crazy, you know, how I think of it still.

I love flight and any moment that you take off in the plane and you feel the wind or the air catch the wings and you lift. And I always, for some reason, just think of, you know, the Wright brothers and how far that we came in just less than a century. And here we are throwing crap into rocks and space just going, yeah, let's go to the Mars. We'll see what happens. Throw something. See where it lands.

Yeah. You're just like, if we could bring those people back and they could just see what we're up to with what they did. And they're just like, we were trying to just get this stupid thing to fly for five feet, man. He's just throwing shit rocks just because, I don't know, he just felt like it. It's crazy. So there you go. Anyway, is there more you want to tease out on the book, Gareth, before we go? No. No, I think for people who are more interested in some of her friendships or feuds with people like Wallis Simpson or Diana, Princess of Wales, that is all in there as well.

But I hope really that this is a different kind of book that people can really enjoy and feel like they're having a conversation with. There you go. There you go. Well, definitely, I'm sure the peak of interest in the history of Britain is even more so now. People are, you know, now you can write about her daughter, right? Yeah, the sequel. There you go. You got the sequel going, and then probably won't write about the new guy. He seems kind of odd. Wait till he's gone. Well, yeah, I mean, he's apparently incredibly healthy.

Is he really? Yeah, he walks everywhere. And also, they're just, I mean, if he has anything, like the Queen Mother's family are borderline immortal. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. I mean, it's the first time. I mean, how long has it been since they've had an official king in England? 70 years.

70 years. Yeah, 70, So 1952. Is our interpretation, I saw him doing some ornery-ish things where when he was signing, I think, some sort of declaration, he was buttering about about some sort of buttering. I don't know if that's the right word. He was telling somebody, get the ink out of the way. Yeah, well, it really should not have been there because if you spill it it's considered like the worst open possible so i think there you go really needed to is that why he was is that why he was

like get that away from me i don't the other thing was it needed to move because his son is left handed so it needed to be moved out of the way but also you just you you have about two seconds before the press gets a photograph and turns it into something there was a brilliant moment when he came to Northern Ireland and he's done, I mean, his charity work here in particular is probably the most extraordinary in recent times with the Prince's Trust. But he

was signing the guest book and they gave him another fountain pen. And as someone who uses them, I know what happened. You just saw him realise that the pen had been held the wrong way and it was pulling in. Oh, geez. But he turned around and he said, what date is it?

And someone behind him said, oh, it's the 13th, sir. And he said, is it? Oh, no, that means I just signed the date wrong. And then his wife, Camilla, said, you also signed it wrong at the other two stops. He's like, what? He just sort of realizes that he's been going through making these mistakes he got quite angry there but he's it's a lot to do i think absolutely the thing that's what's

interesting i'm sure you see this as well with with american politics is sometimes only the most sensational bits are shown outside the country whereas i think we you know he he's much more popular here than he is abroad absolutely yeah that's absolutely a testament to the prince's trust which is whatever you think of monarchy or prince charles the charity he set up the prince's trust to help the inner cities and to help the young people of britain has done absolutely extraordinary work there we go there we go well good stuff then the you know i i think we still haven't forgiven for Diana. I think that's... And it's interesting. I think, you know, Diana was something

I have a great deal of admiration for. I do sometimes wonder at the tendency that people seem to would like Camilla to walk through life with a scarlet A on her chest. It's, you know, that to me seems a bit baffling. I think, you know, I don't know if we can judge someone by the mistakes of their private life. Although I completely understand. I have relatives who absolutely adored Diana and haven't forgiven him either.

Really? So I don't feel so bad then. Yes. I mean, Diana was such a beautiful person. But I don't know. You know, sometimes marriages don't work out. Yeah. Part of it's part of the tragedy,

I think of, well, I suppose what we've been talking about, kind of the, the possibilities of people, I suppose. And I think there is, I mean,

do you know, I also wonder what would have happened things sometimes if she lived longer with things of not the marriage repaired itself, but would their relationship have become a bit more harmonious for the sake of their sons who knows but no he's it's an interest it's just it's even since even from a syntax perspective it's a it took a while when we were doing commentary for remember it's the king you know that's just because no there's really no one working in media today who's had to say the phrase, the king, for quite some time.

There you go. Well, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, especially that whole dynamic with his two sons and the daughter of an American daughter who's a bit of a troublemaker, as us Americans are. I mean, here we've come back and infected the Europeans with our Yankeeism, you know. Yankeeism is a good phrase, actually. What's the old line from the Who? We won't get fooled again. I know. Oh, evidently we did.

Oh! Thanks for your Pete Townshend. Anyway, it's been wonderful, Gareth, to have you on. Thank you very much for having me. Very fun, as I'm sure the book is. Give us your plugs again so people can find you on the internet. Yeah, of course. You can find me on underscore Gareth Russell on Instagram and on Gareth Russell Historian and Author on Facebook.

There you go. Thank you again for coming. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. And again, order up the book. We're Refined Books are sold November 1st, 2022. It's out.

Do. Let's have another drink. I should be able to say that. Do, dearie. let's have another drink. I should be able to say that. Do, dearie, let's have another drink. Let's have another drink, the dry wit and fizzy life of Queen Elizabeth and the Queen, or I'm sorry, the Queen Mother. Let me cut that one more time. Do, let's have another drink, the dry wit and fizzy life of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads.com for us as Chris Voss, all of our places on the interwebs. You can see us wherever we are. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads.com for Chris Voss, all of our places on the interwebs. You can see us wherever we are. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.