Queen Mum A “Ghastly Old Bigot”
The British media has their knickers in a twist over remarks made by a well-known London radio host about the late Queen Mother. Edward Stourton, the urbane presenter of the flagship BBC radio program “Today,” has said in a new book that the Chief Lovey was “a ghastly old bigot.” In the early 1990s, Stourton told her he was just back from a European summit. She replied, “It will never work, you know…with all those Huns, wops, and dagos.” I don’t know why anyone would find these remarks surprising. Only idiots were seduced by the image of a woman who in photos always seemed to have a maximum-strength tiara twinkle in her eyes. Anyone who had been reading between the lines knew that the Queen Mum had nerves (and, unfortunately, opinions) of steel. This is a woman, after all, who, not long before her death, in 2002, said, “I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m so wonderful. The truth is: I’m not a very nice person.”
