Pritchett’s autobiography, My Mess is a Bit of a Life, recounts a conversation she had with then Vice President Biden when she spoke to him at the White House as part of research for the show.

Biden has often made reference to his Irish ancestry and it appears this was a factor in his mother’s attitude toward the English. Catherine Eugenia Finnegan—who was known as Jean—was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania into a family with strong ancestral links to Ireland.

Pritchett, who is British, said in her book that when she met Biden he began talking to her about Ukraine as he had just returned from that country, but his aides moved him off the topic.

“He changed the subject to how much his mother hated the English,” Pritchett wrote.

“His parents were Irish and she had written several poems about her hatred of the English. He went off to find them and returned with hundreds of poems describing how God must smite the English and rain blood on our heads,” she said.

Pritchett said that Biden had talked about his mother traveling to the U.K. and staying in a hotel where she was told Queen Elizabeth II had once stayed.

“She was so appalled that she slept on the floor all night, rather than risk sleeping on a bed that the Queen had slept on,” Pritchett wrote in her book.

The president’s mother passed away in 2010 and it is not clear if any of the poems Pritchett mentioned have ever been made public. Biden has often spoken about his ancestry and publicly identified as Irish.

Biden famously quipped to a reporter from the U.K.’s BBC not long after he won the 2020 Democratic nomination: “The BBC? I’m Irish.”

The president’s great-great-grandfather was Patrick Blewitt from County Mayo, who was born in 1832 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1850, settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was a maternal ancestor of Biden’s mother, who was born in 1917.

Biden’s other Irish great-great-grandfather was named Owen Finnegan and came from County Louth, emigrating to the U.S. in the 1840s. The two families were joined by the marriage of Ambrose Finnegan and Geraldine Blewitt—the parents of Biden’s mother.

There is a long history of conflict between the English and the Irish, resulting from prolonged British rule on the island. Northern Ireland remains a part of the U.K., while the rest of the island is an independent republic.

Newsweek has asked the White House for comment.