The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy. Ben Pimlott

about the attendance of the Duke of Edinburgh in the peers’ gallery of the House of Commons during a debate – something, he pointed out, a royal consort had not done since 1846 – in the course of which the Duke seemed to make his opinions of what was being discussed unconstitutionally obvious.⁷³ The Government Chief Whip backed the complaint, remarking that the consort had not been ‘exactly pokerfaced,’ and the Duke was privately ticked off.⁷⁴ Powell returned to the topic of royal interference on many occasions, as the Queen’s titular ‘divisibility’ – which many people in 1952 saw as just an exercise in linguistic tidying – grew in significance as the Commonwealth evolved.

      As well as Commonwealth titles, there was also another problem of nomenclature – which touched the Sovereign herself, and more particularly her husband, personally. This was the question of what the Royal Family, and its descendants, should be called.