On Tuesday, I wrote about the peculiarly vivid dreams many of us have had during the lockdown.
Since then, I have discovered that quite a few of us have been dreaming about the Queen.
‘I’d just moved into the wing of an old castle and I was settling in on my first night to watch Normal People,’ a writer called Emma Winterschladen revealed on Twitter, ‘when the Queen came home (past midnight!) and jumped out of her skin when she saw me. Then she made me a cuppa.’
Many lockdown dreams about the Queen seem to follow a similar order of events: Her Majesty appears without warning, giving the dreamer a bit of a shock, but then she does something reassuring, such as brewing a cup of tea, or sharing a secret.
A writer called Emma Winterschladen described her dream on Twitter and said ‘the Queen came home (past midnight!) and jumped out of her skin when she saw me. Then she made me a cuppa’
The novelist Graham Greene kept a dream diary from 1965 to 1989.
In it, he recorded a series of brushes with Her Majesty. In one of them, he found himself unexpectedly sitting next to her at a service in Windsor Chapel.
‘The officiating clergyman preached an absurd sermon and I found myself in danger of laughing.
‘So, I could see, was the Queen, and she held the Order of Service in front of my mouth to hide my smile. Then Prince Philip entered.
‘I was not surprised at all that he was wearing a scoutmaster’s uniform, but I resented having to surrender my chair to him. As I moved away the Queen confided to me: “I can’t bear the way he smiles.” ’
Dreams about the Royal Family often seem to involve the dreamer making a dreadful faux pas.
Years ago, Dame Judi Dench told the writer Brian Masters of a dream she had involving a surprise visit from Prince Philip and Princess Anne.
‘My mother said: “Won’t you draw up a chair?” and was mortified to see that there was nothing for the Prince to sit on but a large basin filled with farmyard straw and a heavy, strong-smelling manure. The Prince sat right in it, without a murmur.
‘Mother and I were both beside ourselves with embarrassment, and didn’t know where to look.
Princess Margaret confessed to author A. N. Wilson that she had a recurring nightmare she had done something truly awful which had made the Queen angry
‘The Prince noticed our discomfiture, and sought to reassure me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “We take everything in our stride.” ’
Masters himself had a recurrent Royal nightmare — ‘It happens about twice a year’ — in which he was with the Queen in a small, cosy bedroom in Buckingham Palace.
He is perched on the bed, watching television, while the Queen is in a chair, knitting him a jumper.
They chat away about the television, swapping gossip about the actors.
Suddenly, a butler appears, and announces that dinner is served. Masters can’t find anything suitable to wear, and he has forgotten his razor.
The Queen tells him he can borrow Prince Philip’s suit and razor, but he can’t find them anywhere.
He eventually finds a cut-throat razor in an old sink, but shaves himself so fast that he cuts himself in a thousand places.
Prince Philip’s suit turns out to be several times too big for him.
When he finally arrives in the dining room, he is very late, and finds that the Queen is already eating her dessert.
She looks up and says: ‘You’re too late now. I couldn’t wait.’
It would be interesting to know if the Queen ever has nightmares about behaving improperly in public — appear- ing at the State Opening of Parliament in a mauve jumpsuit, for instance, or mishandling her sword at an Investiture and accidentally cutting off some- one’s head.
I know for certain that other members of the Royal Family have had dreams about her.
When I was writing my biography of Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling, the author A. N. Wilson told me that, stuck for anything else to say to Margaret at a dinner party, he had asked her if she ever dreamt about the Queen.
She confessed to a recurring nightmare.
She dreamed that she had done something truly awful, something that transgressed everything that she had been brought up to believe, and which had made the Queen angry.
After she woke up, the nightmare would linger in her mind, and she would have to telephone her sister for reassurance.
‘All Margaret needed to hear was the Queen’s voice: “Hello, hello.” They would then hang up and the day could proceed without the black cloud of being in disgrace.’