Huns, wops and dagos at the palace

Edward Stourton, the BBC Today programme presenter, has recalled in his new book, It's a PC World, a conversation he had with the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, about the European Union.

She told him: "It will never work, you know....It will never work with all those Huns, wops and dagos."

While he thought what she said was "nasty and ugly," concluding she was "a nasty old bigot," he has sought subsequently to put the remark in context, arguing that "The Queen Mother came from a generation when people did talk like that."

Ethnic groups

No, Mr Stourton, they didn't all talk like that. I cannot recall any of my grandparents using those words. Certainly my parents never used them. I recall once, when very young, asking my mother what the words "Wogs go home," meant. I had seen them daubed on a bridge. My mother simply said that "wog" was a nasty word for "coloured people".

It's true that her generation did not try to make politically correct references that distinguished people from different ethnic backgrounds, hence the "coloured" reference. I remember it was a problem in local newspapers. At the Huddersfield Examiner discussions with local ethnic groups led to a policy of referring to the two main ethnic groups as "black" or "Asian" and I have stuck with that ever since, never feeling quite comfortable with phrases such as "Afro Caribbean" or "Afro American".

Tar brush

I would love to report that the most derogatory terms had been abandoned but I still hear such words occasionally today among the older generation. I have one shooting friend, a contemporary, who refers to black people as "jigaboos" and another who suggested jokingly to a slightly dark skinned mutual friend that there was a "bit of the tar brush" about him.

I suppose that certain "naming" to denote racial difference will be something we shall always have to live with. I have heard it argued that those black people who voted for Barack Obama principally because of his race were being racist in their choice. If so, could this be an acceptable defence of racism in certain circumstances? I can understand any black American choosing Obama for historical reasons.

Royal form

I wasn't at all surprised to hear about the Queen Mother's language. The royals have form, particularly her son-in-law.

Some of Prince Philip's less than PC remarks have been collected in a book of gaffs that includes the following:

* To a British student in China: "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes."
* To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
* To a British tourist in Hungary: "You can't have been here that long — you haven't got a pot belly."
* To a Scottish driving instructor: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?"
* To Australian Aborigines: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"
* While on a factory tour, looking at a crude electrical fitting, he suggested it might have been "installed by an Indian."

Funnily enough the Duke of Edinburgh is so broadly politically incorrect that at least he can claim consistency. I have met him a couple of times and can confirm that he behaves the same with everyone. In fact I'm sure his children have suffered his tongue and Prince Charles probably more than the rest, which would explain why Jonathan Dimbleby's authorised biography of Charles portrayed the duke as an authoritarian bully.

Whatever the truth of this, I can imagine Prince Philip would have hit it off with his mother-in-law. They spoke the same language.

Mr Smith's Christmas trees and a question for royalty

The newspapers keep telling me that people are not spending this Christmas. Someone should tell our local garden centre. They had a thousand trees just over a week ago and now they've almost all gone. We found ourselves picking over the scraps this morning.

I couldn't believe the prices: £30 for anything of any size. Last year they were half that price. I like going to this garden centre because the man who founded it, Mr Smith, always asks me the same question in a voice that is slow but quite high pitched. In fact the conversation is always the same brief exchange.

"How's your garden?" he asks.

"It's doing fine," I say.

"Oh, I am pleased," says he.

I've been going to his garden centre for nearly 20 years and the wording of the conversation has never changed. In fact it's such a reassuring exchange of pleasantries that I'm thinking of sending it to the Queen who might like to have it up her sleeve as an alternative to "Have you come far?" and "What do you do?"

On the other hand, unlike Mr Smith, she could not assume that whoever she was addressing would have a garden. But I suppose it would be a safe subject to raise with the Queen without seeming impertinent.

"How is one's garden?"

"One's garden is doing fine."

"Oh I am pleased."

I'm wondering if there could be a market for a small "book of pleasantries for use in encounters with royalty."

"How's your garden?" could be a tricky one for Prince Charles since there is a risk that it could lead to a full-blooded conversation and that might not be welcome, particularly if it strays in to awkward topics such as the wisdom or otherwise of talking to one's plants. Then there is the GM crops debate. Before you know it you could have unwittingly caused a diplomatic incident.

Taboo subjects: dogs, Annie Leibovitz, the BBC, Nicholas Witchell, League Against Cruel Sports.

Safe subjects: the weather, geography, gardens (not Prince Charles), occupation (as long is it is fairly sedentary and not pole dancing or journalism - see Nicholas Witchell).

Mr Smith has now passed the business on to his son who has never once asked me about my garden or anything else for that matter. But I still see his father. In reality my garden is a mess but I would never tell Mr Smith. That would spoil everything.

British Library - balancing the books

Criticising landmark developments is the great British disease. The Channel Tunnel, the Millennium Dome, Wembley Stadium - they never had a chance. Now it's the turn of the Olympic complex. We wanted the Olympics in the UK. I remember cheering when I heard we had won the bid. But already the carping has started. Any big project such as this is going to incur cost overruns. It goes with the territory.

Do you remember how people criticised the British Library as a white elephant? It cost £500m and took 20 years to build from concept to opening. Even Prince Charles couldn't resist a jibe, describing it as a "secret police building." He was wrong. The British Library is a magnificent building, particularly on the inside which must offer some of the best facilities for undertaking concentrated work that I have found anywhere.

Part of its secret is what is not there: no telephones, no interruptions, no noise. Instead there is comfortable seating with strong, broad desks and an efficient ordering and delivery service. More than that, for those of us who use it,the service is a tangible return for the money we pay in taxes.

A well stocked, efficient library, offering free access to those of a nation's citizens who wish to read and research in quiet contemplation must form the bedrock of any reasonable definition of civilization. The only improvement that could and should be made to the British Library is to extend its reading services to other locations outside London.

But this isn't going to happen. What should be part of our birthright, the principle of unfettered access to one of the world's greatest collections of the written word, is under threat. The British Library has warned that it might need to start charging readers for its services, if the Treasury goes ahead with proposed cuts to its budget.

I hope this is no more than posturing, the sort of heavyweight barging that always takes place when Government departments are competing for their slice of the pie. My reading pass is a treasured possession. I love the British Library in the same way that I love the British Museum and the National Gallery. I love them most of all because their doors are open, offering free entry to all who visit.

You might run the world's biggest company and rub shoulders with the power elite every year in Davos, but if you want to see the Wilton Diptych or Vermeer's Young Woman seated at a Virginal you will have no better view than the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Last week the Government was starting a debate on Britishness. For me it starts with fair play and free access. The British Library didn't charge Lenin or Marx. I hope it won't charge me.