Seriously:
But the object itself is less a source of speculation than what lies inside. So imagine my surprise when the first person to describe its contents to me was Phil Brown, manager of Hull City football team. He sat next to the Queen at a luncheon in the Hull Guildhall three years ago, and managed to get a look inside.
‘It was almost like a lady’s prop with essential items,’ he told me. ‘It had things that you would expect – make-up, (coin) purse, sweeteners she put in her coffee, the normal stuff. You expect that a lady-in-waiting would carry her handbag, but for the Queen, it was almost like a comfort blanket.’
Her ladies-in-waiting are responsible for necessities such as extra pairs of gloves as well as needles, thread and safety pins to make emergency repairs. Her private secretary keeps the texts of her speeches, which he hands to her at the appointed time. But the Queen ‘is a very practical, down-to-earth lady,’ said one of her long-serving ladies-in-waiting. ‘She needs a comb or lipstick or Kleenex, and if she hasn’t got it, what does she do?’
For the same reason, her handbag usually contains reading glasses, mint lozenges and a fountain pen, although rarely cash, except for a precisely folded £5 or £10 note on Sundays for the church collection plate. The most intriguing item she has been known to carry is a bag hook, an ingenious and sensible device. ‘I watched the Queen open her handbag and remove a white suction cup and discreetly spit into it,’ recalled a dinner guest at the Berkshire home of the Queen’s cousin, Jean Wills. ‘The Queen then attached the cup to the underside of the table. The cup had a hook on it, and she attached her handbag to it.’
The Lady
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