![]() ![]() ![]() (I have never seen this anecdote in print, so repeat it here for posterity.) Only at the bottom of the stairs did a wave of realisation come over the monsignor that his companion was in fact the Queen Mother herself. He replied that she couldn’t possibly be older than himself, as the only person in London his senior was the Queen Mother. On one occasion, as they came down the staircase at the club, a lady remarked to Mgr Gilbey that she had to be careful as she was the oldest person in London. A survivor from an earlier age, surrounded by a coterie of admirers, he was the author of an excellent book of Catholic apologetics. He was chaplain to Cambridge University for 100 terms, and after his retirement in 1965 he lived at the club. The monsignor was Alfred Newman Gilbey (1901-1998). Upstairs one can visit, high in the attics, the Monsignor’s chapel. The dining room of the Travellers has a small round table by the door still referred to as “the Monsignor’s table”. The only difference is in the rate of decline. This is nothing for a Catholic to be pleased about: all churches are in decline. Its membership is in freefall, and the Church of England is, according to some studies, perhaps facing extinction in two decades. The status of Anglicanism in England will then be closer to that of the Episcopal Church in the United States. After the Queen’s time, we will be one step closer to the abandonment of the idea of a national church in England, and the reasons for keeping the bishops in the House of Lords will seem even more tenuous. The next reign will be interesting, for Prince Charles does not believe in the Church of England in the way his mother does. I find both topics fascinating and, thanks to my Catholic faith, somewhat alien. I have dinner at the Travellers Club in London’s Pall Mall with an author who has written widely on both the Church of England and the Royal Family.
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