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How Queen Elizabeth Used Her Handbag To Send Hidden Messages to Her Ladies-in-Waiting

The royal cat is out of the bag: what did the Queen Mother keep in her purse, and why was it a disaster if the late Queen Elizabeth laid her Launer flat on the floor?

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A handy tool for royal courtcraft: Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother carry matching bags in 1990. Photo: Getty

Anyone who’s anyone knows that you’re not really anybody at all until you make the news for some terribly chic incident involving a handbag. Grace Kelly had an Hermès re-named in her honour after the Monegasque princess used the bag to shield signs of her unannounced pregnancy from the paparazzi. Dior, too, christened their Lady Dior bag after Princess Diana fell in love with the piece in Paris. Political careers lived and died when Margaret Thatcher ‘handbagged’ her ministers, hurling her ‘mock-crock’ onto the briefing table during troublesome negotiations and withdrawing from its depths a crumpled piece of paper with a gossip that could make or break a Secretary of State. To whit: when the powers that be open, place, close, or throw their handbag, people pay attention.

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and Diana, Princess of Wales at Trooping the Colour, June 13, 1992. Photo: Getty

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