About thirty years ago the Guardian first published two amusing Anecdotes about the Queen Mother.
Taken as a whole they reflect the contradictory roles we like royalty to fulfil: unworldly and impossibly regal, engagingly domesticated and.
After that, tales about the Royal family became respectable; they were also, quite rightly, believed to be true.
Readers reeled to see stories actually printed in a national newspaper that until then had had only an underground existence in certain circles.
About thirty years ago the Guardian first published two amusing Anecdotes about the Queen Mother