OK, Malcolm is fully aware that Antonia Fraser, selling her novelization at the 2002 Edinburgh Book Fair, rubbished any chance that Marie Antoinette mouthed that “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” bon mot.
The great philosopher of French bakery was, in fact, Louis XIV’s queen, Marie-Thérèse (we have that on the authority of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, book VI).
If anything, projecting the utterance a century back merely makes it the more preposterous and insensitive.
It doesn’t really matter if the substance was “cake” (the usual English rendering) or “brioche” (high cholesterol stuff) or Louis XVIII’s version of la croûte de pâté.
Let’s hear it for Marie-Thérèse (as below):
In our degenerate days, royalty is — of course — far more “of the people” Yes? Agreed?
Well, of course there’s this:
As invited by that Times front page, we swiftly turn to page 18:
The Duchess of Cambridge yesterday continued her steady defection from the high street by wearing a £795 Alexander McQueen shirt and matching £580 skirt.
Just what we need in current troubles:
a display of conspicuous consumption
by the Clothes-horse to the Nation.
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