A biography for Gyles Brandrethhasn’t been written yet.
“I regularly dream about the Queen. Apparently, millions of people do. I wonder who she dreams about?”
“In many ways, Prince Philip was remarkably good-humored and long-suffering.”
“Private weddings are becoming something of a family tradition. My daughter Saethryd married her husband Jason at Marylebone Register Office in 2005 while my wife and I had a lunch at Pizza Express.”
“I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with royalty by saying too much.”
“I'm a friend of Walter Cronkite.”
“Whatever you wanted in entertainment, Des O'Connor could provide, so he was in a way the last of his kind.”
“I heard one woman say to another in the queue at a book signing: 'I shouldn't be buying this. He's a former Tory MP, you know.'”
“It's good to stretch your mind.”
“For more than 40 years now, relentlessly, I have been pursuing brief encounters with the great and the good.”
“I was in the debating society at school, I was the president of the Oxford Union, and then I became an MP in the Nineties.”
“In fact, when I shake hands with all those wonderful people at the Stratford Literary Festival, they will be shaking hands with the hand that shook the hand of Oscar Wilde.”
“When I was 11, at prep school, I was starring in the school play, editing the school magazine and standing as Conservative candidate for the 1959 mock election.”
“People confuse being full of words with being terribly intelligent and informed.”
“Praise makes me humble, but when I am abused, I know that I have touched the stars.”
“I am the prince of procrastination. It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after”
“My introduction to the Queen was disconcerting, to say the least. 'This is Gyles Brandreth,' said the Duke of Edinburgh cheerily. 'Apparently, he's writing about you.'”
“Contrary to the popular caricature of him, the Duke of Edinburgh was neither judgmental nor unfeeling.”
“I have been a print journalist.”
“Once, during one of the jubilee tours, I was in the car immediately behind theirs and I watched Prince Philip telling the Queen a story. He kept her laughing for 20 minutes.”
“Prince Philip is conscious of his place in the heritage of the Royal Family.”