The Queen Mother's "Marie Antoinette-ish Reason" For Hospital Stay Revealed

The Queen Mother, who was known to be popular with the public during her entire lifetime, had a very serious habit that has been described as “Marie-Antoinette-ish.” In an op-ed for The Telegraph, Sophia Money-Coutts has revealed that the late Queen Mother was “unable to resist” this luxurious dish, and it landed her in the hospital several times.

While writing about the late Queen Elizabeth II, Money-Coutts wrote that a family member “sat next to one of [the Queen Mother’s] physicians some years ago and, somehow, they got on to the subject of the Queen Mother’s various hospitalisations for swallowing fishbones.” The Queen Mother had a series of quietly-handled hospital visits during her life, but the Royal Family and the palace teams wanted to keep the true story on the down-low.

“It wasn’t fishbones, [...] it was a lobster allergy.” Food allergies can surface later in life, even if you’ve eaten a certain food all your life. The Queen Mother may have found it too difficult to give up her favorite dish, despite the risk. “The QM had supposedly developed such an allergy, but was unable to resist lobster from time to time, and so every now and then had to be treated in hospital as a result.”

“A fishbone in the throat was simply deemed more acceptable to the general public than the more Marie Antoinette-ish reason that it was illicit lobster guzzling,” Money-Coutts said of the late Queen Mother’s luxurious palette. The Queen Mother was reportedly an unwavering fan of Oeufs Drumkilbo, a uniquely-British dish where lobster is the star. The Goring Hotel, a frequent Royal Family hot spot, confirmed that the royal matriarch would order the dish on every visit.

Writing about the Royal Family’s food fancies, for The Lady, Thomas Blaikie reported a similar story. On a royal tour of favorite dishes, Blaikie ordered “Oeufs Drumkilbo, a favourite of the Queen Mother’s. I never knew this, but everybody I spoke to subsequently said at once: ‘Of course—Oeufs Drumkilbo’.” Blaikie told a story that confirmed the Queen Mother’s penchant for the dish, writing “The Lady’s features editor, and I were having a fabulous tea in the Chesterfield hotel, Mayfair, with a distinguished gentleman. I mentioned the Royal Dinner. Lo and behold—would you believe it?—he’d known the Queen Mother, had eaten Oeufs Drumkilbo with her and been given the recipe by one of her chefs.”

The hospitalization-worthy dish in question features “cooked lobster, a brace of hard-boiled eggs, some prawns and a couple of tomatoes” and Tom Parker-Bowles, Queen Camilla’s son, confirms that the King is still a fan of the dish and regularly serves it at Birkhall.