QI The Book of the Dead

well-behaved children (his only child, Frank Junior, died aged five); sometimes like snoozing club bores (they loved a fire and had a taste for port and grog; one of them even smoked a pipe); but mostly they were the source of barely containable chaos. He describes his favourite pair, Tiny and ‘the Hag’ – West African guenon monkeys – launching themselves around the house ‘with the velocity of a swallow’. The Hag took an irrational dislike to Mrs Buckland’s sister and ‘very nearly had the dress off her back’. Food was stolen, visitors tweaked, ornaments shattered, other pets terrorised. Given ten minutes in a bedroom by themselves, wrote Frank, ‘the bill will rival that for the Abyssinian expedition’. Their vast cheek pouches swelled with booty (Frank estimated that the Hag could secrete twenty acid drops in each pouch). One afternoon he gotthem to disgorge ‘a steel thimble, my own gold finger ring, a pair of pearl sleeve links, a farthing, a button, a shilling and a bit of sweet-stuff’.
    But Buckland was not averse to a little anarchy:
    Although my monkeys do considerable mischief, yet I let them do it. I am amply rewarded by their funny and affectionate ways…nothing whatever would induce me to part with them. My monkeys love me, and I love my monkeys .
     
    With the Hag, in particular, he developed a close understanding. ‘I could tell from her look what she wanted; and I am pretty sure she could read my thoughts in her own way.’ There are, as he said, ‘monkeys and monkeys; no two are alike’. She was his constant companion for twelve years and ‘if ever an animal thought, it was the old Hag’.
    Unlike many of his contemporaries, Buckland didn’t sentimentalise his relationship with animals; after all, this was the same man who had enjoyed roasting field mice while still a schoolboy. But he had a close affinity for monkeys that bordered on the inspirational: ‘Many an idea I have had looking into the dear Hag’s brilliant eyes.’ Perhaps this explains why, given all the roasted, boiled, stewed and puréed animals he had consumed over the years, there is no record of Frank Buckland ever eating a monkey.

     
    Should you be tempted to keep a monkey yourself, consider this last cautionary tale. King Alexander I of Greece (1893–1920) of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg was the second son of King Constantine I, and first cousin to our ownDuke of Edinburgh. As he looked unlikely ever to become king, Alexander lived his role as crown prince to the full: going up to Oxford, playing inordinate amounts of football and tennis and driving racing cars as fast he could. He was an extremely popular and agreeable young man, though somewhat accident-prone. In 1917 he narrowly averted death in a train bombing. On other occasions, he broke a leg while ‘practising jumping’ and was seriously injured in a car crash after swerving to avoid a stray goat.
    His accession to the throne in 1917 came about as a result of his father opting to keep Greece neutral during the First World War (they were, after all, a mostly German family). The Allies couldn’t be doing with this and the governments of the UK, France and Russia issued an ultimatum: either Constantine left the country with his pro-German eldest son, or the alliance would recognise the revolutionary Eleuthérios Venizélos as the legal ruler of Greece. This left Alexander in the rather irregular position of inheriting the Greek crown while the two rightful heirs were still alive. Shortly after Alexander’s coronation, Venizélos became prime minister of Greece in any case. He dominated the new king and, though there were reports of clashes, in reality Alexander I was the puppet of the new democratic government.
    Not that the regime had long to enjoy his services. Three years into his reign his dog (not very tactfully named Fritz) was attacked by two of his father’s pet monkeys. In defending the dog, Alexander received a severe mauling from the monkeys and died shortly afterwards of blood-poisoning.
    It is perhaps the only example of a simian-led coup in modern European history but its effects were far-reaching. Constantine regained the throne and plunged Greece into a disastrous warwith Turkey, the effects of which are still felt today. As Churchill observed: ‘A monkey bite cost the death of 250,000 people.’ In 1922, the Greek monarchy fell and the royal family was sent permanently into exile. One of their