Word: debrett
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...Caveat: If you feel you need a professional researcher, write for a list of qualified practitioners to the Board for Certification of Genealogists, 1307 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. Average hourly fee: up to $10. For Anglo-Americans, Debrett's of London, the guru of British pedigree and form, opened a tracing bureau for the common man in February and received more than 1,000 inquiries its first month. For easy-to-trace families, Debrett's can deliver eight generations for roughly $200. In the U.S., there is a nourishing mail-order trade in expensive coats...
...entitled to be addressed as Her Royal Highness. In accordance with King George VTs decision, the former Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, after her marriage to the man who had been King Edward VIM, had to be content with being a mere duchess. Now Patrick Montague-Smith, editor of Debrett's, the authoritative guide to the British aristocracy, says it was all a mistake. The rules of British heraldry permit a wife to take her title from her husband, and since Edward remained a Royal Highness after his abdication, the duchess should have been called Her Royal Highness...
Part of the trouble was that Sir Francis (family crest, according to Debrett's, "two hazel nuts slipped proper"; family motto, "Le Maitre Vient") frequently went on extended trips attending to his real estate business. That left Lady Peek alone with the butler, Maurice, who was paid only $36 a week, testified that Lady Peek began giving him money "to buy shirts...
Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the crusty world of Debrett's, the handbook of the British aristocracy, and it took a three-year court battle to force the decision to confer the title. That struggle really began, however, in 1912, when Sir Ewan was born, registered a female and baptized Elizabeth. As he grew up, Elizabeth became more and more convinced that he was, in fact, male. "It was hell," he recalled in a 1952 interview, "especially when I was forced to attend the debutante balls during my first London season." By the time...
...only could Debrett watchers read for the first time the biographies of Scottish clan chiefs,* but in a special introductory article by Editor P. W. Montague-Smith they learned some new facts about Queen Elizabeth II. Everybody knows that the Queen is descended from William the Conqueror, who defeated Saxon King Harold at Hastings just 900 years ago this October. What Montague-Smith has discovered, though, is that Elizabeth also carries the blood of Harold in her veins...