The Real 'Favourite' Of Queen Anne's Era? Tea, And The Gossip That Swirled Around It
A film about Queen Anne of Great Britain, The Favourite, by the unorthodox Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, will probably cadge a few Oscars. Even if it doesn't, this comic and oddly moving film has already achieved something extraordinary. It has ignited widespread interest in the life of a corpulent, gouty, myopic, staunchly Anglican queen who allegedly had passionate relationships with two ladies of her bedchamber and who was pregnant 17 times but died childless before her 50th birthday about 300 years ago.
That's an operatic biography, but strangely enough, until this movie, the only popular image the words "Queen Anne" triggered was of curved brown legs.
Not the queen's gout-afflicted limbs that are a focal point of this raunchy film, but the classic, S-curved, cabriole legs that are a hallmark of Queen Anne furniture. Immensely popular across England and the American colonies, this elegant furniture was a fixture in wealthy 18th-century parlors from London to Boston.
But why did this style of furniture, which constitutes Anne's most prominent cultural legacy, become such a rage? One of the chief
