"A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth."

"I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for."

"We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in."

"She is far too bright for her station in life, which she takes altogether too solemnly."

"But we can go back further still, for the thing did not start with Princess Anne, either; before her there was Princess Margaret. She, too, was attacked for going on holiday, and indeed for putting on weight, but the main charges, which seem almost incredible today, concerned her choice of men friends - and after, not before, her divorce."

"Her Royal Highness was charming ("I have this terribly flat voice," she told me apologetically), with a ready sense of humour and a dry wit. We did one rehearsal and the producer said: "That's very good, Ma'am, but do you think you could sound as if you were enjoying yourself a little more?" She looked him straight in the eye and said acidly, "Well, I wouldn't be, would I?""

"Not once have you hung your head in embarrassment even for a minute after those disgraceful photographs. Clearly you have never considered the damage you are causing us all. How dare you discredit us like this and how dare you send me those flowers?"

"You have done more to bring shame on the family than could ever have been imagined."

"Which one? My sister, my mother or my husband?"

"Silly ass. The land would be much more valuable today."