Word: debrett
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...past 182 years, Britons have engaged in a strange vernal rite. Armed with a strong reading glass and a stronger curiosity, they amble attentively through the scarlet-and-gold-bound thickets of Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage & Companionage, the annual compendium of who's who in the British aristocracy. The sport is more sedentary than bird watching, but the discoveries can be just as fascinating. Take this year's 6-lb., 3,202-page edition, which made its appearance last week...
When his father's death made him a viscount in 1960, a popular, promising Labor M.P. named Anthony Wedgwood Benn rocked the Debrett set by declaring vehemently that he wanted no part of the peerage. Reason: lords, lunatics, criminals and minors are barred from sitting in the House of Commons, where political careers are made and most Cabinet ministers chosen...
Last year Britain's Debrett set had some etiquette pointers for the Radziwills. After accompanying the President of the U.S. and his wife to a dinner at Buckingham Palace, they were listed on the official court calendar as Prince and Princess. Proper Britons boggled over the fact that Stash is now a British subject, thus could correctly use his title only if he had a special license from the Queen, which might be as hard to get as some annulments. The accepted explanation for the faux pas was that palace protocol officers consciously elevated the Radziwills on that occasion...
...parvenU. Two years ago, he formulated Hall's Law, which states that "the higher a person's social position, the more names he's likely to have (e.g., Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunketty-Earnle-Earle-Drax)." Delving further into the small print of Debrett's Peerage, Hall emerged with another proposition, published last week with a statistical breakdown in Town magazine. Hall's Second Law: "Proneness to divorce increases in direct ratio to position in the social scale...
...Blenheim party also celebrated the coming of age of Serena's uncle, Lord Charles George William Colin Spencer-Churchill, who is also studying in the U.S. Thus Serena and her school friends from Foxcroft, and Lord Charles' college friends rubbed shoulders with most of Debrett, led by Princess Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon (who was recently just a photographer), the Marquess of Blandford (heir to the dukedom) and his Greek wife Tina (who was recently Mrs. Aristotle Onassis). and Princess d'Arenberg (who was recently Peggy Bancroft of New York...