Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  ***

  When Obama took office for his second term, he gave some thought to returning the compliment. In 2013, he appointed a new Ambassador to London, Matthew Barzun, a Harvard-educated campaign supporter who was familiar with royal etiquette, having previously served as US Ambassador to Sweden. Barzun had the rare extra honour of being invited to a small dinner party, known as a ‘dine and sleep’, at Windsor Castle. As he recalls: ‘It was really special, getting to spend a night at Windsor Castle and sixteen of us sitting round a dining room table and corgis running around. And the Queen’s feeding them under the table.’ Among the other guests were the Archbishop of Canterbury and actress Dame Maggie Smith, star of one of the Queen’s favourite programmes, Downton Abbey. Every guest had a special mini-exhibition prepared in their honour in the Royal Library, featuring suitable items from the Royal Collection. Barzun still recalls that his display included letters from George VI’s state visit to the USA – ‘the little handwritten note about how unbelievably hot it is in America and he had to change his shirt six times in one day’ – and a British military map from the American Revolution. He was so impressed by the royal attention to detail that he decided to replicate it when he got back to the US Embassy. ‘Little gestures like that make such a difference. When people came to Winfield House I’d try to do the same. So if someone came from Newcastle, say, I’d try to put on Dire Straits or some great music from their neck of the woods – as a conversation starter.’

  Barzun was honoured to find himself seated next to the Queen at dinner. ‘It was a long dinner where you’re talking about all sorts of things. I know it’s a cliché but there’s this twinkle in her eye when she’s talking about President and Mrs Obama. It’s real.’

  Barzun was on a mission that night, however. ‘I had a little bit of business I was trying to do,’ he says. He had received a request from Washington – to explore the idea of another state visit to the USA. Although it had been announced that the Queen’s days of long-distance flying were over, might she at least consider a trip to Washington? The request had come from the President himself. ‘He really wanted her to come to Washington one more time. She had just publicly said she was not doing the long-haul stuff anymore but we were trying to figure out a way. I said: “Well, what if we did this . . . and that?” I didn’t want it to turn into a business meeting.’ The Queen had another idea for a meeting with the President, says the Ambassador. ‘It was: “Why doesn’t he come here?’ And I said: “OK, well . . .” You could just tell that she was going to make it happen one way or the other.’

  Sure enough, almost exactly a year later, in the final months of the Obama administration, the presidential helicopter touched down on the lawns outside Windsor Castle. There was no guard of honour or motorcade waiting for the Obamas, just the Queen, the Duke and his Land Rover. He would drive the four of them the short distance up to the Castle for lunch. And this was not just any lunch. The previous day, the Queen had celebrated her ninetieth birthday – the first monarch in history to do so. ‘She is truly one of my favourite people,’ the President said later, after giving her an album of photographs of her meetings with all those presidents going back to Harry Truman. ‘Should we be fortunate enough to reach ninety, may we be as vibrant as she is.’

  This would be a tricky political visit, coming just weeks after that curt presidential attack on Britain’s foreign-policy ‘shit show’, and just weeks before the UK’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union. These would be sensitive matters for discussion the following day in Downing Street.

  Yet nothing would illustrate the dual axis of the ‘special relationship’ as eloquently as the scene later that evening, when the President and first lady dropped in for dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. Cameras captured the President being introduced to two-year-old Prince George in his dressing gown – and clutching the toy Portuguese water dog that the Obamas had sent him as a baby. The scene was on front pages around the world the next day.#

  The following day, after talks with David Cameron, the two leaders faced a press conference to discuss Brexit, terrorism and much else. Inevitably Obama was also asked about the state of the special relationship. He replied with the story of an unnamed senior member of the White House team responsible for organising his overseas trips. ‘She has had one request the entire time that I have been President,’ he said. Though this globe-trotting White House pro had seen every world leader come and go over the years, all she really wanted was a proper ‘peek’ at the Queen. So, after lunch with the President, the Queen ensured that his trusty aide got more than a glimpse. She arranged a proper introduction. ‘That,’ said Obama, ‘is the special relationship.’

  ***

  Once again, the relationship would be tested by the arrival of a new incumbent in the White House. Just weeks after the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017, Theresa May travelled to Washington to meet him. She duly issued an invitation, on behalf of the Queen, for Trump to make a state visit in the near future. The plan stalled, however, due to the threat of protests from activists and Left-wing pressure groups who announced their intention to disrupt the visit, citing Trump’s remarks about immigration, women, Brexit and assorted grievances besides. The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Vince Cable, said that such a state visit would ‘embarrass’ the Queen and the country while the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, declared that Trump was ‘not welcome’ in the capital.

  There had been no protests of any note against recent state visits from nations such as Saudi Arabia, China and Indonesia, nor against official visitors from other countries demonstrably less liberal, less multi-cultural and less pro-British than the USA. Over the years, the British government has foisted the most dreadful guests on the Queen, not least the Romanian dictator to whom Sir Vince Cable’s predecessor, David Steel, gave that Labrador puppy. Yet, as far as some were concerned, Donald Trump was in a category all of his own. Little wonder that, in his first year in office, the US President preferred to make a state visit to Paris – where President Emmanuel Macron laid on dinner at the Eiffel Tower and obligingly confined demonstrators to a different part of the city – rather than come to London.

  There was not, in fact, the faintest possibility that the Queen would be ‘embarrassed’ to meet Trump. According to one former member of staff, she was intrigued to meet a head of state who, like her, had a Scottish mother and who, like her, happens to own a large area of Scottish countryside (the Balmoral estate in her case and a pair of famous golf courses in Trump’s). Furthermore, some of Trump’s relatives have stayed close to their Scottish roots and local community projects on the Hebridean Isle of Lewis where Trump’s mother, Mary, was born.

  Having downgraded his trip from a state visit to an official one, President Trump arrived in Britain on July 12th, 2018.

  The following day, while tens of thousands of protestors marched through London, Mr Trump flew by helicopter to talks with Theresa May at Chequers. There was an awkward atmosphere thanks to an interview in that morning’s Sun newspaper in which he had criticised her handling of the Brexit negotiations. Despite Mr Trump’s subsequent insistence that the bilateral relationship was at ‘the highest level of special’, it neither felt nor looked like it.

  Yet there was no such froideur two hours later as the President, accompanied by the first lady, arrived at Windsor for tea with the Queen. The smiles appeared warm and uncomplicated. The Coldstream Guards had formed a Guard of Honour on the Quadrangle and the Queen invited the President to join her to inspect them. It was a novel experience for both them, since she had usually delegated this role to the Duke of Edinburgh (recently retired from such occasions). Some Trump critics accused the President of breaching protocol by walking both the wrong side and in front of the Queen but Palace insiders said that she hadn’t been remotely bothered. ‘People are always nervous on these occasions. I think he was just focussing hard on not touching her and not tripping,’ said one.

 
After introducing the Trumps to her small entourage, including her US-born lady-in-waiting, the Countess of Airlie, the Queen led them in to her private quarters and tea in the Oak Room, her inner sanctum. Mindful of American tastes, she had ordered fresh coffee, too. It was just the three of them as the rest of the White House team were entertained to tea (plus coffee, sandwiches – minus crust – and cakes) in the more formal Crimson Drawing Room. Clearly, the two heads of state got on well as the meeting overran by nearly twenty minutes (an age at this end of the protocol spectrum).

  Afterwards, the President was almost taciturn by his standards. ‘It was a very easy talk,’ he told ITV’s Piers Morgan. ‘We had a great feeling.’ Did she like him? He was almost coy. ‘Well I don’t want to speak for her but I can tell you I liked her. I liked her a lot.’

  The nearest to a revelation was his disclosure that the Queen had said of Brexit that ‘it’s a very complex problem . . . nobody had any idea how complex that was going to be’. No one could argue with that. Then the President corrected himself: ‘I’ve heard very strongly from a lot of people, you just don’t talk about that conversation with the Queen, right?’ The serial Tweeter was suddenly watching his words. ‘Let me tell you what I can talk about. She is an incredible woman, she is so sharp, she is so beautiful, when I say beautiful – inside and out. That is a beautiful woman.’

  However much the ‘special relationship’ may fluctuate at the political level, it has always been underpinned by that mutual respect between the Queen and the American people. Sir Antony Acland’s conclusion to his despatch to the Foreign Secretary on that 1991 tour rings as true today as it did then: ‘Our two countries are and remain the best of friends and that friendship is well symbolised by the extraordinary respect which the American people have for the latest representative of a monarchy to whose real and imagined abuses the US owes its existence.’

  * In recent years, the Queen has dispensed with some of the more arcane rituals for presenting credentials. Ambassadors are still driven to the Palace in a horse-drawn carriage, but these days they wear morning dress rather than evening dress. Nor are they expected to walk backwards out of the audience room. As the Marshal, Alistair Harrison, explains: ‘There are two priceless vases on either side of the door. I always say: “The Queen would much rather see your back than see you back into those”.’ He himself must double-check the badge of office that he wears on a chain. One side shows an olive branch, the other a sword. ‘I make sure that the olive branch is outwards which is the signal to the Queen that the ambassador comes in peace.’

  † Prince Andrew sailed to the South Atlantic in HMS Invincible. He was on deck when it came under attack from an Exocet missile. Serving with 802 Naval Air Squadron, his missions included anti-submarine work, anti-surface warfare, intership delivery, search and rescue and casualty evacuation. ‘I definitely went there a boy and came back a man,’ he said later.

  ‡ Visiting West Berlin in June 1987, Reagan declared: ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’. It fell in November 1989.

  § Blake Edwards, director of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and 10.

  ¶ The creator of Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar and Cats, among many other theatrical hits, London-born Andrew Lloyd Webber has been described by Forbes magazine as ‘the most successful composer of musicals in history’.

  # A week later, President Obama would get one of the loudest laughs at his final White House correspondents’ dinner when he observed how people were already losing interest in him as they looked ahead to the next presidency. ‘Last week, Prince George showed up to our meeting in his bathrobe,’ he joked. ‘That was a slap in the face!’

  Chapter 7

  EUROPE

  ‘Vive la reine!’

  ZIZETTE

  By any standards, it was a demanding schedule for a twenty-two-year-old Princess. She had been overseas just once before, to southern Africa the previous year. That tour had been with her parents and sister. Now, six months after her marriage to Prince Philip, Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh was to be the principal focus of attention on her first overseas tour as Number One – to France.

  What was ostensibly a springtime weekend break to Paris had rapidly become the continental spectacle of the year. There were also ambitious diplomatic expectations, too. The last royal visit to Paris, by the King and Queen in 1938, had been a great success. Since then the Second World War, the fall of France and the British retreat from Dunkirk, had left the public on either side of the Channel less sure of each other. The Princess’s task was to help rebuild the bonhomie. And the French were more than enthusiastic about the visit.

  The authorities had made plans for up to one million spectators descending on the royal route. Tour operators from as far afield as Belgium, Holland and Scandinavia had organised ‘royal visit excursions’. Though the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh had specifically said that they wanted no presents, the British Embassy had been inundated with gifts, ranging from a sports car and silk stockings, to a case of Camembert cheese and a gold model of the Eiffel Tower. Someone had also sent a perambulator.

  Of all the gifts, this was actually the most appropriate. For the Princess was already three months pregnant with Prince Charles. Not that anyone outside the immediate family had the faintest idea. Once again, it is a sign of how much the world has changed that such news was not only withheld until the last possible minute, but was, even then, wreathed in obfuscation. The only indication that the future sovereign was expecting came after her return from Paris, when it was announced that the Princess would ‘undertake no public engagements after the end of June’.

  Undeterred, she launched herself into her four-day tour on the hottest Whitsun weekend in record. It is hard to imagine a pregnant Princess being subjected to anything comparable today. This was a tour that would involve alcoholic toasts, five-course lunches and dinners, several late nights, plenty of unpasteurised food, a stomach bug, a nightclub and what came close to a plane crash. Just three years after the end of the Second World War, though, Britain was a more stoical place than it is today. A princess raised on wartime notions of duty was not about to let her own medical condition upset months of planning.

  Tens of thousands lined the streets of Paris just to see the royal car on its way through the city – a reception that reportedly moved the Princess ‘to tears’. The official purpose of the visit was the opening of a new exhibition called ‘Eight Centuries of British Life in Paris’ at the Galliera Museum, where the organisers included one Georges Pompidou. Almost quarter of a century later, he would be her host for one of the most important visits of her entire reign. On this occasion he was a member of the local commission for tourism.

  The Princess’s host in 1948 was President Vincent Auriol. At the Elysée Palace he conferred the Légion d’honneur on his guest, whereupon protocol would normally have dictated a kiss on both cheeks for the recipient. ‘I delegate my powers to your illustrious husband,’ the President announced theatrically, before awarding Prince Philip the Croix de Guerre for his war service.

  The following day, the royal couple went up the Eiffel Tower by ascenseur while the crowds tried to follow suit using the stairs. It is estimated that half a million people lined the banks of the Seine to watch the Princess and the Duke enjoying a sightseeing trip by motor launch. The numbers were so great on the Avenue Foch that the royal car took half an hour to crawl through the crowds.

  The media attention was relentless, causing the Duke to become increasingly agitated, particularly as he had succumbed to a stomach bug. Still clinging vainly to their original ‘quiet weekend’ idea, the Edinburghs switched to an anonymous car one evening and vanished for a private dinner at the Tour d’Argent, overlooking the Seine. Within five minutes of their arrival a crowd of at least a thousand had congregated on the street outside, while the Princess, in a blue dress with white fur cape, and the Duke, with a jaunty red carnation in the buttonhole of his dinner jacket, found that most of the restaurant had been c
leared out. As they dined on tomato soup, fillet of sole, breast and leg of duck and finally chocolate-vanilla soufflé, the Duke was furious to discover a hidden camera lens in an adjacent table.

  Then it was on to the nightclub of the moment, the Chez Carrere Cabaret. Once again the place had been emptied of anything resembling the public. The pregnant Princess and the ailing Duke still managed to dance until 1.35 a.m., before being driven back to the British Embassy residence. ‘One of the most appalling evenings I have ever spent,’ the Princess’s Private Secretary, Jock Colville, later told biographer Elizabeth Longford. ‘Everybody dressed up to the nines, nobody in either place – except the lens.’

  The crowds were out in force again on the final evening to watch ‘Zizette’, as many French liked to call the Princess, arrive at the Opéra in what was described as a ‘white silk gown, very tight at the waist, with billowing crinoline effect skirt’. Her wardrobe had not only given no clue to her condition, but had made a lasting impression on this most demanding of audiences. ‘She is wearing the “New Look”. Mais oui!’ announced Christian Dior, no less. ‘The Princess’s style is just right. Her hemline is only a little shorter than some of our new frocks.’