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# Most Peculiar
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/eto-ochen-stranno/
- Published: 2022-11-14T17:55:32.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:37:32.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Aristocracy, London, Monarchies, Observations, Mores, Humour

Most peculiar. The former husband of England's Queen Consort Camilla, the retired Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, was recently the Queen's official representative at the funeral of a distant relation of the royal family, John Bowes-Lyon, a second cousin of the Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. The deceased was also a first cousin of Parker Bowles himself. Brigadier Parker Bowles is, in his turn, connected with the Queen Mother too: his parents were friends of hers, and she was, it seems, his godmother.

When the King, the Queen or other members of the family cannot, will not or, by their station, ought not to attend this or that event, they may send representatives in their place. These are friends, relations, certain aristocrats and suchlike persons. But a former husband? And of a queen renowned for rather scandalous marital and adulterous entanglements, at that...

At the very least, it sounds like a badly cut dramatic plot. Until you learn that Parker Bowles is not merely the former husband of the present Queen, but also the former beau of Princess Anne, whom he courted in the 1970s, and that after her marriage and his own he remained on good terms with his old flame, even standing godfather to Princess Anne's daughter. And after all this he remains close to both of his former ladies of the royal family: Camilla, to whom he was married from 1973 to 1995, and Anne, her predecessor on the amorous stage. This is by now a thoroughly respectable vaudeville.

Still, Windsor is a village after all. And it turns out that, as in any proper village, everyone there has slept with everyone else, and 82-year-old gentlemen are by no means an exception.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_7883@14-11-2022_20-55-32.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_7884@14-11-2022_20-55-32.jpg)