John Bickersteth attributed his appointment as Her Majesty’s Clerk of the Closet to his prowess with a gun. The offer of the job, which involves choosing the monarch’s chaplains, being present when a new bishop pays homage and vetting the Queen’s reading material to ensure that she is not exposed to “Roman Catholic propaganda”, came shortly after he had “bagged three geese” on a morning shoot during a visit to Sandringham. “I was roused by the head keeper and went bumping out in a Land Rover across the fields and put in a very deep ditch, 8ft deep,” Bickersteth recalled. “As it was getting light these great skeins of geese appeared . I went back to Sandringham with three geese under my bag and as I…

Source: The Times February 28, 2018 00:04 UTC