Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  The starchiness of these occasions could, inevitably, leave regulars yearning for a spot of drama. One member of the Royal Household recalls the night that Helen Adeane, the free-spirited wife of the Queen’s famously reserved Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, decided to enliven proceedings by dropping a fake dog-mess on the carpet mid-banquet. The liveried footmen were agog. How had a corgi sneaked inside a state banquet? While the joke was much enjoyed afterwards, staff were less amused by the behaviour of some of the visiting entourage during the 2005 state banquet for President Hu Jintao of China. ‘The Queen remarked they were all whipping out their laptops during the state banquet and doing emails at the table,’ says David Cameron. ‘Very bad manners.’ The behaviour of some Chinese officials during the 2015 visit by President Xi Jinping did not impress the Queen, either. She was later filmed commiserating with the senior Metropolitan Police officer in charge of security for the visit. ‘Oh, bad luck,’ she told Commander Lucy D’Orsi at a garden party, noting that some of the Chinese delegation had been ‘very rude’ to the British Ambassador.†

  As a rule, however, the Royal Household will do all they can to accommodate every special request, though little can now be done for smokers, since a 2016 ban on all smoking on royal premises. Heads of state who dislike the rigmarole of white tie can opt for a dress code of black tie, lounge suit or national dress. If guests are running late, there will be no embarrassing gap at the table. A ‘reserve’ banquet is held for surplus members of both entourages in the Royal Household Dining Room. They will eat the same food, be dressed in the same clothes and, in the event of a no-show, will despatch one of their number to make up the numbers. Perhaps the most original excuse for a late appearance came at the 1989 state banquet for President Babangida of Nigeria. According to Sir Patrick (now Lord) Wright, former head of the Diplomatic Service, one of the President’s senior officials arrived just as dinner was over. He apologised immediately to the Queen, explaining that he had missed the presidential jet earlier in the day because he was unmarried. As a result, there had been no wife to wake him up in time.

  The order of precedence was finally set aside as the world entered the twenty-first century. At the state banquet for the Queen of Denmark in 2000, the Queen decided to spread her family around the table. That way no one would feel ‘below the salt’. In 2017, it would mean that every member of the British Royal Family and government was seated next to a member of the King of Spain’s entourage. Prince Harry, for example, was next to the Spanish Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

  Another adjustment – one that has proved extremely popular with all the Queen’s guests – has been the shifting of the speeches from the end of dinner to the start. The Queen set this precedent, in unhappy circumstances, just after the Windsor fire of 1992. She was due to address a City of London luncheon marking the fortieth anniversary of her accession to the Throne, but she had a cold and a sore throat. The damage to her family home, on top of months of wounding headlines about royal marriages and royal finances, had left her at a low ebb. She had wanted Prince Philip to make the speech on her behalf. Her Private Secretary insisted that the words had to come from her. The compromise was that she would speak before, and not after, the meal; and she has been keen to stick to that arrangement ever since. It not only means that both heads of state can enjoy their dinner rather more, but also ensures that their words reach a wider audience, since the press can include them in earlier newspaper editions and the broadcasters have more chance of hitting the evening news bulletins. Not so at that first state banquet in 1954, however. On that occasion the guests had already worked their way through a wine list of Tarifa sherry, Johannisberger Erntebringer Riesling 1949, Château Lafite Rothschild 1937, Krug Private Cuvée Vintage 1937 and were on to the Sandeman vintage 1935 port by the time the Queen rose to address her guests, and an international radio audience, on the historical ties between the two nations. ‘We thrive and prosper on the same liberal institutions which we have slowly built up through the years,’ she told the King of Sweden. ‘We share an abiding love of the sea which both separates and unites us.’ In reply, the King saluted Britain’s ‘stout defence’ and ‘immense sacrifice’ during long years of war.

  In 2017 the wine list flattered both nations – with a Camel Valley sparkling rosé from Cornwall and a Spanish Bodegas Alión, Ribera del Duero 2000 – but the guests had hardly sat down when the Queen opened the speeches. ‘With such a remarkable shared history, it is inevitable that there are matters on which we have not always seen eye to eye,’ she said, in an oblique reference to Gibraltar. The King of Spain had already raised that issue in an earlier speech to the Houses of Parliament. No more needed to be said on the subject here. The Queen went on: ‘The strength of our friendship has bred a resilient spirit of cooperation and goodwill. We deeply appreciate the significant contribution that Spain continues to make to this country.’ After a toast from the world’s longest-reigning monarch, Europe’s newest (and tallest) monarch rose to thank her. Acknowledging the ‘different choices’ made by Britain and Spain over membership of the European Union, the King added that this was ‘an integral part of our democratic tradition, rooted in the values of the European civilisation to which our two countries will always belong’.

  The media would certainly give this occasion plenty of coverage, not least because of the jewellery on display. All state banquets bring out prized pieces from the Royal Family vaults, but, with two royal houses on parade, this proved to be one of the most glamorous in years. The following day’s papers would all feature pictures of Queen Letizia wearing her 1906 Fleur de Lys Tiara, and the Duchess of Cambridge in a pink Marchesa gown and the diamond-and-pearl Lover’s Knot Tiara.

  Having attended plenty of state dinners all over the world, David Cameron still believes there is nothing quite like a Palace banquet for wowing even the most modern world leader: ‘They are brilliant, ruthlessly efficient. Drinks beforehand, the receiving line, everyone gets to shake hands with the Queen, you go into dinner, you do the speeches and the toast, you eat your three courses, have a drink and you are out. Bang, bang, bang. You don’t feel you are being rushed at all. It’s done in good time. Even though we all know Buckingham Palace is falling apart, it all looks beautiful and it’s everything you could wish for.’

  After the old-world formalities of the first day of a state visit, most visitors then follow a well-trodden route over the next few days: a mandatory visit to Downing Street for talks and lunch, some glad-handing with the financial sector in the City of London, a visit to a university. Some of these excursions might conclude with a trade agreement or political deal, but that has never really been the main aim of a state visit. The emphasis is on mood, ambience and bilateral warmth.

  Another traditional feature of a state visit has been the return banquet, when the host repays some of the Queen’s hospitality. During the first state visit by a Chinese leader, in 1999, President Jiang Zemin had arranged an elaborate banquet for the Queen at the Chinese Embassy. Those expecting an earnest, rigidly formal occasion were in for a shock. Protocol (and this was the protocol-obsessed Chinese, after all) dictates that there are no speeches at a return banquet. Yet once dinner was over, the seventy-three-year-old president rose to his feet and promptly burst into song. Dame Margaret Beckett, then Leader of the Commons and a future Foreign Secretary, still chuckles at the thought of the Queen unexpectedly finding herself next to a cabaret turn. ‘The Chinese president decided to serenade the guests. He sang very well actually,’ she recalls. ‘I was opposite the Thatchers, and Denis Thatcher was appalled. He was like a little volcano bubbling up and down. And then the President said: “There’s got to be a reply”. Everyone looked at the Queen and we all thought: “You’re kidding me”. But further down the table, on the Thatchers’ side, was the Speaker of the Commons, Betty Boothroyd.‡ Betty, God bless her, can sing and, one way or another, the President asked her to sing.’

  As Jiang Zemin and Betty Boothroyd performe
d a duet of ‘Our Hearts Were Young and Gay’, Sir Denis grew ever more apoplectic. ‘We were just hoping Denis Thatcher wasn’t going to explode,’ says Dame Margaret. ‘He kept saying: “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life!” ’ The royal guests, on the other hand, were enjoying every moment. Dame Margaret adds ‘It was clear that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were on the brink of hysteria for quite some time.’

  Of all the changes the Queen has observed in seven decades of entertaining world leaders, one of the most noticeable has been the shrinking diary. Earlier in the reign, she would lay on a gala evening for her guests at the Royal Opera House – a production of Le Coq d’Or for the Swedes in 1954, for example. As the years went by, few world leaders would have either the time or the appetite for a whole night at the opera. There was, however, one musical evening in 2004 when President Chirac and his wife, Bernardette, came to Windsor Castle to celebrate the centenary of the Entente Cordiale. After the banquet in St George’s Hall, the Queen escorted her guests through to the Waterloo Chamber for coffee and a compressed version of the hit musical, Les Misérables. It was a long evening for the cast, who had to finish their regular performance in London’s West End, jump on a coach with police outriders and dash to Windsor – still in costume and make-up – for their royal encore. They made it just as the guests were having coffee, and the evening was a triumph. Its success, however, was also due to the fact that the Queen had paid attention to those small details, just as she had done with the King of Thailand all those years before. Mindful that this was an evening to mark 100 years of Franco-British bonhomie, she realised that it would be highly inappropriate to entertain her guests in a room named after France’s greatest defeat. For one night only, Windsor Castle’s Waterloo Chamber officially became ‘The Music Room’.

  ROYAL RELATIONSHIPS

  Those who have worked for the Queen over many years say that she genuinely enjoys her role as a host. She is extremely proud of her Royal Household team and of the way they unfailingly rise to the occasion, whoever happens to be visiting. Her former Private Secretary, Sir William Heseltine, points to the way visits have reflected British foreign policy over the years: ‘You can see a pattern: a concentration on the important countries of Europe at various times as negotiations for entry waxed and waned; an increasing interest in the Arab nations – remarkably, it seems now, one of the earliest visitors was King Faisal of Iraq, in July 1956, just before the Suez crisis; occasionally interspersed with “family visits” from other European monarchs.’ Visits from the last, he says, were ‘undoubtedly the most enjoyable’, from a royal point of view.

  Aside from the familiarity and the family connections, fellow monarchs could understand each other’s challenges and problems in a way that an elected politician or a dictator could not. Only a fellow monarch might feel able to seek or offer advice on anything from succession to prime-ministerial interference; from coinage or heraldic orders, to interesting destinations for a royal yacht. Queen Margrethe of Denmark, who was educated in Britain, enjoys regular low-key private trips to London and always drops in on her cousin at Buckingham Palace. She has even admitted that she ‘dreams in English’ when she is in Britain. The fact that Britain and its Royal Family provided shelter to so many refugee monarchies during the Second World War remains etched in the collective European royal memory.

  Monarch-to-monarch visits are much enjoyed by the staff, too, since they also know their opposite numbers. From time to time, all the European royal Private Secretaries get together to swap notes. Similarly, there are annual get-togethers for all the European royal press officers, royal chefs and royal protection officers. The royal trade union seems to be in good shape, despite the gloomy prediction of King Farouk of Egypt, shortly before the collapse of his own monarchy in 1953: ‘There will soon be only five kings left – the Kings of Diamonds, Heart, Spades and Clubs, and the King of England.’ In 2018, there were still twenty-seven monarchs reigning over forty-three nations. At the same time, the latest available United Nations Human Development Index listed all 188 countries according to a combination of life expectancy, education and income. Of the top twenty, more than half had a constitutional monarch as head of state, with Norway in first place (Britain was at number sixteen). As far as the Queen is concerned, even deposed monarchs are still part of the regal trade union. During her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 she invited all the world’s monarchs to lunch at Windsor. Working out the seating plan for the official photograph could have been an insuperable challenge, even for a professor of protocol. After all, where do you put a fully-fledged emperor like Akihito of Japan? The Queen had a very simple solution. She would sit in the middle and all the other monarchs would be placed according to the date of their accession. As a result, she was flanked by the King of Romania and the King of the Bulgarians. Both had lost their thrones many years before, and both their nations were now avowedly republican. Nonetheless the Queen’s view is: once a monarch, always a monarch – unless you abdicate.

  Sir Antony Acland, former British Ambassador to Spain and latterly to the USA, remembers the Queen’s enthusiastic support for Spain’s King Juan Carlos during the years immediately after the restoration of the Spanish monarchy in 1975. ‘The King had a tremendous respect for the Queen and used to telephone her quite often,’ he says. ‘I remember one of the things she told him was he needed to get out and about around the country. She’d been persuaded to do walkabouts in parts of Britain and he should do the same. He very much took her advice and went down to Andalusia. He was initially quite retiring, though he played a tremendously important part in establishing democratic modern Spain.’ The closeness between the monarchs was certainly a bonus for Sir Antony, as British Ambassador. ‘I saw the King often. He was very open. I remember going to see him and telling him I was about to go on a trip back to London and he said: “Do give the Queen my love when you see her”. I didn’t admit that I didn’t automatically bowl in to Buckingham Palace and have a cup of tea.’

  Sir Antony’s boss during the same period was David Owen. The former Foreign Secretary remembers the way that the Spanish monarchy helped Spain regain its place in the democratic fold, thanks to Juan Carlos. ‘He was very, very good and playing a skilful hand. He definitely stopped a military coup.’ Lord Owen was less impressed by another young monarch who would not regain his throne, despite the Queen’s active encouragement. ‘The Queen was very supportive of the young King of Serbia – she’s his godmother. But he couldn’t speak Serbian at the time that he was trying to get back in to power. I did say to him: “I think the best thing is you should learn Serbian!” ’

  The Queen was stoical about the outbreak of abdication-itis that began in 2013. Four monarchs, including Juan Carlos, plus the Pope would step down in the space of a year. The Queen, however, had made a Coronation oath before the Almighty. Prior to that, aged twenty-one, she had dedicated herself to her royal duty ‘for the whole of my life’. So, she would not be abdicating.

  DIFFICULT GUESTS

  If fellow monarchs have always been very welcome, the Queen has also had some atrocious guests to stay over the years, more so than any previous sovereign. Interestingly, most of them turned up during the same period. Look through the Palace visitors’ book and, when it comes to the objectionable, the rude and the downright psychotic, the Seventies stand out.

  Not that the British government seemed to harbour any great concerns about Major-General Idi Amin of the Ugandan army, when he first came to power in 1971. Uganda had been a British colony until 1962, when Prime Minister Milton Obote led it to independence. By 1966, Obote had also assumed the presidency and was a vocal critic of British foreign policy in Africa, particularly the decision by Edward Heath’s Conservative government, on coming to power in 1970, to resume arms sales to South Africa. Uganda even threatened to leave the Commonwealth at its tempestuous 1971 summit in Singapore. Obote’s mistake, however, was to go there in the first place. While he was out of the country, Amin, as hea
d of the army, saw his opportunity and launched a swift and successful military coup. Britain wasted no time in recognising the new regime. Amin might have been a fantasist – he claimed to have fought in the Second World War, despite joining the King’s African Rifles as a cook in 1946 – but British diplomats were keen to get him onside as quickly as possible. In July 1971, he let it be known that he wanted to come to London to meet the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Arnold Smith. Although Britain was already aware of terrible human-rights abuses by Amin’s gangsters, the Foreign Office readily agreed. At their request, the Queen went one better than an audience and gave him lunch at Buckingham Palace. She quickly realised that she was dealing with a maniac when he took her into his confidence. He told her that he was planning to start a war. What’s more, he was planning to invade a neighbouring Commonwealth nation, Tanzania, to establish a corridor to the sea. As Arnold Smith recorded later: ‘He shocked her by saying he wanted to cut a strip of territory from his landlocked country down to the Indian Ocean.’ The Queen might normally regard her lunch conversations as confidential. On this occasion, however, she felt morally obliged to report what Amin was up to. She had a high regard for Tanzania’s President, Julius Nyerere, and was appalled that Amin felt entitled to invade his neighbour’s sovereign territory to grab a 450-mile section of northern Tanzania.